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Powderfinger: Sunsets (DVD)
Year: 2010
Director: Gregor Jordan
Cast: Ian Haug , Jon Coghill , John Collins, Bernard Fanning, Darren Middleton
Release Date: December 03, 2010
Distributor: Universal
The Disc: 5.0
FILMINK rates DVDs and Blu-rays out of 5Combining revealing interviews and terrific concert footage, this provides compelling insight into one of Australia’s finest bands
"I think it's a good time to pull up stumps," smiles Powderfinger guitarist Darren Middleton. "We still look good, and we can still play well." When Australia's biggest rock band called it quits earlier this year, speculation instantly started to bubble away about what had brought an end to the group's twenty-plus-years career. While there are no definitive, lay-all-your-cards-on-the-table proclamations made during the Sunsets documentary, there's plenty of reading to be done between the lines.
Director Gregor Jordan (Two Hands, Ned Kelly) - a longtime friend and visual collaborator of Powderfinger - has various band members interviewing each other individually, almost akin to the way in which the police separate a group of criminal suspects in order to remove their collective bravado, while also seeing how their stories coalesce. The responses from the band members are illuminating and constantly compelling.
Drummer Jon Coghill talks of how hard it is to get along with his bandmates, and frontman Bernard Fanning voices his fears about the band turning into "a bad version of itself", while guitarist Ian Haug proclaims Powderfinger's big, high profile farewell tour a "terrible idea." Obviously bristling under what he sees as an unnecessary measure of finality, Haug says that he will never, ever perform under the Powderfinger banner again.
Sobering, revealing and artfully shot, the Sunsets documentary (which also includes eye opening footage of a much younger, far more hirsute Powderfinger) pointedly proves that the scattering of a successful rock group jigsaw puzzle is just as complex as the many pieces that initially went into creating it.
When combined with the big, roaring concert film from the band's Sunsets Farewell Tour - featuring, amongst others, a blinding "Pick You Up" and an utterly transcendent "These Days" - which comprises the rest of this double disc DVD set, it makes for a haunting reminder of what a truly powerful, and often otherworldly, band Powderfinger truly were.
