Tough.
It’s a word that is used to describe many things and it’s a word that seems so embedded in Thomas M. Wright’s debut feature film Acute Misfortune. The film follows the tale of Erik Jensen, a journalist, who inadvertently gets caught up in the life of Adam Cullen, the notorious winner of the Archibald Prize in 2000. As a result of a brief encounter coupled with a succeeding article, Erik Jensen (played by Toby Wallace) begins the task placed forth by Cullen (portrayed by Daniel Henshall) of writing his biography. It is through Jensen’s meeting and subsequent journey with Cullen that the concept of being tough or being a conventional macho man is dissected. Wright uses the story to convey the degradation of a man from a supreme being of his microcosm to eventual slave to his lies. This is aided by the amazing amounts of research put into the life of Cullen which was necessary to create such a surreal depiction of the man. Throughout the story, we are introduced to three different types of tough, those who are tough against other, those tough enough to bear the brutality of others and those who contrarily are not tough at all, no matter the façade.
Daniel Henshall presents the initial tough guy as overbearing, a blokey bloke; a man so rough and wild that in many ways you have to stop and question his sanity. Truly, within the first ten minutes or so I felt rather uncomfortable watching this film. This could be the skewed aspect ratio pushing us closer to the action or Cullen’s dominance of the room; it was probably both, however, that made me writhe in my seat at times. With his bald head and overbearing features, Henshall creates a character (in stature and social standing) comparable to that of Kurtz from Apocalypse Now or the book Heart of Darkness, leaning more towards the latter. He commands his environment and the dynamic between Wallace and Henshall emphasises the Kurtz-Marlow paradigm accentuates the contrast between both men. Indeed, Wright’s decisions to often look down upon Jensen creates the feeling of the dominant and submissive or as Cullen so eloquently put it, “[those] who fuck or get fucked”. Wright continues this journey of a surreal uneasiness by placing a few sequences that are played backwards to add an air of the audience’s own powerlessness in the situations. These sequences play as a manifestation of the undercurrent of emotion that I felt and it adds to the horror that is often heard of but not explicitly shown which Wright plays upon very well. The commanding nature of his performance immediately cements Cullen as the quintessential tough man, hunter, gatherer and controller.
It is then that Marlow appears as the observer in the form of Wallace’s exhibition of Jensen, the man who takes the punishment but never reacts. Wright makes things blatantly obvious from the get-go that Jensen is not in control, a night vision camera looking at what seems to be a fairly unwilling subject emphasising his point. Jensen never acts up and in many cases you sort of wish he would. He just takes the verbal, emotional and physical abuse that placed upon him by Cullen and fails to retaliate (whether this is based on his aspirations of being a writer or being afraid this is never really made clear). Wright does this wonderfully by taking us into a point of view shot whenever something is going to happen to Jensen. Whether it be the firing of bullets or the falling off from a motorcycle, we feel Jensen’s pain. The brutal following shots of injury make this even more obvious and in some points errs on excessive (but that, of course, is only so due to the fact that the film itself is rather minimalist in its approach).
Finally, the person who is defeated and fails to accept it is depicted in the final act of the film. Possibly the strongest part of the film, both actors seem to exhibit their influence even more to portray the abusive relationship of the two men. The reality is that’s what I was waiting for, the uneasy relief of tension that I felt came a little late in the film that resulted in me wanting a little more. The film is unconventional, unlike its story, and lingers on the uncertainty of the characters actions to draw you forward, which makes the final act great.
Acute Misfortune deconstructs the archetype of the tough man and unveils the inadequacies that can arise from it. Thomas M. Wright with the collaboration of Daniel Henshall and Toby Wallace made this an interesting film that oozes with Australian trademarks and is worthy of being one of the best Australian made films I’ve seen in a long time. The direction created a unique atmosphere that almost made up for the lack of momentum in some instances. This film is tough, it depicts tough people and in many cases, it’s tough to watch but as a whole Acute Misfortune allows us to see into the life of Australia’s most notorious artist as well as the life of a man crushed by his desire to be bigger than what he was.
Acute Misfortune
Melbourne International Film Festival
Brisbane International Film Festival
David (18)