By Dov Kornits
“Music has always been a very important part of my interests, and my interests have always been very diverse,” director, Scott Hicks, tells FilmInk at The Adelaide Film Festival, just after the premiere of his new documentary, Highly Strung. The film forms part of a musical through line that spans the Australian filmmaker’s impressive oeuvre. With rich human drama a proven specialty thanks to films like Snow Falling On Cedars, The Boys Are Back, No Reservations, and The Lucky One, Hicks also has a strong cinematic facility for the often unusual and nearly always fascinating world of music. He directed video clips for bands like INXS; made his name internationally with the stunning biopic, Shine, which starred an Oscar winning Geoffrey Rush as famous concert pianist, David Helfgott; and chronicled acclaimed composer, Philip Glass, in the documentary, Glass: A Portrait Of Philip In 12 Parts. Hicks now turns his eye toward the surprisingly turbulent, increasingly volatile, and frequently eye-opening world of The Australian String Quartet, a group of next-level players whose personal fractures are as evocative and commanding as the music that they play.
As well as the complex personal relationships that drive The Australian String Quartet (this country’s only full-time quartet, and a true musical institution thanks to its thirty-year run), Highly Strung also takes in the involvement of wealthy arts patron, Ulrike Klein, who gifted the quartet with the world’s only matched – and thus enormously valuable – set of Guadagnini instruments. Adding a touch of the explosive are the film’s scene stealing appearances from The Carpenter Siblings, the musician scions of a gaudy, over-the-top family business that runs on the buying and selling of rare stringed instruments. Calling themselves the “Kardashians of the stringed world”, their mercenary instincts and colourful clothes run directly counter to classical music’s pure, rarefied image.
In a rare feat, Highly Strung is just as eloquent in its depiction of musicians as it is their instruments, and represents another fascinating career detour from the always fascinating Scott Hicks.
Do you show your documentary films to your subjects before the films are released?
“It’s an obligation to actually share it with people and hear what they have to say, because they’re not always happy. Philip Glass was not happy when I showed him A Portrait Of Philip In Twelve Parts…”
How do you respond to that?
“You have to argue your case. In the case of Highly Strung, it was terrific because even though there was controversial material, it was well received. I don’t think people fully realise the implications of it. It’s going to be an invasion, and in making it, I like to acknowledge that in the sense of including in the film references to the film being made. I’m not trying to pretend that we [the filmmakers] don’t exist, because it’s so obvious. And your very presence impacts on situations.”
Is that stylistic choice something that has evolved for you?
“Yes. It came a bit through the Philip Glass film, and in that context, it was actually Philip who made that happen because he just kept talking to me. At first I thought, ‘Wait a minute, I’m a fly on the wall, don’t talk to me!’ But he wanted to have a conversation, and I realised very quickly that, well, that’s interesting. It was much more intimate. It’s an acknowledgement that you’re there, and that they know you’re there.”
So that becomes part of the style of the film?
“Yes. Exactly. It just depends on how much you end up relying on that or using it. It’s a matter of trying to find a balance.”
So Ulrike Klein [Jurlique founder] coming to you initiated Highly Strung…
“Yeah, so Ulrike and Alison [Beare] from Ngeringa Arts came to see Kerry [Heysen, Hicks’ wife and producer] and I about two years ago. They told me this story about the Guadagninis and the project to get the instruments organised. We had a long conversation, and Ulrike basically said, ‘Do you think there’s a film in this?’ I said ‘Absolutely, there’s a great story here.’”
And you knew about the centre as well?
“I didn’t know anything. I didn’t even know about Guadagnini. It was completely new to me. I just realised that anything involving instruments that are that rare, and that sought after and that expensive, was bound to have layers of interest. I could already envisage the dealers, the makers, the history. So I could feel a lot of strands. When you make a documentary, as in any story, you want several strands to interweave.”
So you’re behind the camera shooting, which is also something [that’s happened] since Philip Glass?
“When I started on the Philip Glass thing, we didn’t have a budget of any kind, and I just thought that I’d better shoot stuff to get things in the bank, and then when we can afford a real cameraman, we’ll get a real cameraman. I actually brought in a crew with Philip, and he changed. He became Philip Glass, the icon, instead of Philip, chopping garlic and chatting over his shoulder, which was much more interesting. So I threw that out and just kept shooting the whole thing myself. You’re put into the situation of having to create a connection with the subject in front of the camera and vice versa.”
How did you crack Highly Strung in post-production?
“We had 105 hours of footage by the time we were done. Any documentary is a journey of discovery; you have the ideas of what you’re going to pursue, but then life happens. And it just unfolds in front of you, and of course in this case, spoiler alert, the complications of life within the string quartet became very evident. At one stage, Ulrike came to us and said, ‘I’m sorry. The film’s dead, isn’t it? Because it’s not going to happen?’ And I said, ‘Well, actually, I think that we need to push on.’ And it was just a matter of how to capture it and how to use it. Then there were also the things that come out about Ulrike’s life, and her past and some of the reasons for her interest in instruments.”
Did you originally think that the culmination would be some sort of performance at the centre?
“Yeah, but it was much more complex than that. We ended up with several stories, including the Carpenters in New York, who just fascinated me. They were like a whole other world that is part of this universe of ancient instruments. And they’re about the marketing and the salesmanship and the show business of it all. And they really cut it as musicians. Whatever you think of their style or their manner, they know what they’re doing.”
For someone who’s not really au fait with the world of classical music, it gives you a rounded view of it…
“I just didn’t want it to be precious. It had all the fingerprints of something that could be very respectful, a walk through a genteel world of classical music and ancient instruments…a History Channel sort of thing. So I resisted that all along.”
What’s your relationship to classical music?
“Music’s always been a very important part of my interests, and my interests have always been very diverse. But I’ve always gone to classical concerts, and that’s what led me to meet David Helfgott, which started the whole journey to Shine. I can’t say why it’s particularly fascinating to me, but what was intriguing to me when I finally sat down and looked at Highly Strung were the resonances that came out of the other films that I’ve made, like the Philip Glass film. This is just me saying this, but you try to figure out what is it that I’ve made? And in the end, the Philip Glass documentary turned out to be, I think, about balance…the balance of life. And how do you achieve a balance of family, with work, with artistic creation, social life, your obligations and your business? And we all struggle with that, and in an odd way, Highly Strung has elements of that to it. And the quartet themselves; how do you balance family? Or is it all about the work? So it’s interesting for me to reflect on that, but it wasn’t the starting point – that’s in a sense where it arrives. When we started editing, I had a lot of material to do with the historical things, about the instruments, and the history. I started putting all that together and it started to feel like The History Channel. I thought, ‘I’m not making that film.’ My philosophy is this: if you want to know more about Guadagnini, go to Wikipedia – you’ll find it real fast! This was about the people. People who are obsessed with what they’re doing. Whether they’re musicians, investors, dealers…they’re all obsessed. That’s the best part of making documentaries: working with subjects or people who have obsessions. The documentary that you engage with reveals a world of obsession to you that you know nothing about. That’s really what I set out to do.”
You obviously grapple with the idea of balance?
“I wrestle with it all the time. All of us do.”
Even making documentaries, which I imagine aren’t the best paid jobs…
“Making Philip Glass was a labour of love. In order to start making it, Kerry and I just had to pay the bills. I was making commercials in America and using the income from that to finance the making of the documentary, so in a strange way, Madison Avenue paid for the development of the Glass project. It’s about finding a subject that has those layers of fascination that you just want to get involved with. I love it, as an antidote as well to the big machine of movie-making, where there are so many different forces in play and you’re dealing with many, many different people and egos and agendas and everything else. It’s a joy. You get up in the morning and think, ‘What are we going to do today? Let’s go follow so and so’, and off you go. It’s as free as that.”
Highly Strung is also edited in an interesting way, where sections are cut much more rapidly than others. Was that a conscious choice?
“It was part of my feeling from the outset that I did not want to make a ‘bog standard’ documentary about musical instruments. In the process of research, I watched a number of films about violins, and they can be very boring very quickly if you’re not careful. There are a lot of films that have been made where people are talking about Stradivarius. I’m not making that film. I’m making a film about people, and I just have to pull the audience along with me. So it was really a deliberate choice to be aggressive in the cutting, and to throw people around. This is going to be a bumpy ride. Don’t doze off or you might miss something. So there are a few explosive things that happen.”
You also get the contrast in the film between Australian and American approaches to art.
“I think the Carpenters [the American violinists that Hicks follows] are extraordinary because they’re unashamedly, aggressively commercial in their approach, and good on them. In the Australian context, people look sideways at that…it’s like they look sideways at success. I’m sure that the Carpenters could learn a thing or two from The Australian String Quartet, but what the Carpenters understand is that they are a brand, and they’ve manufactured that brand very quickly over a period of about five years. And they’re highly successful: they perform all over the world, to huge sell out audiences, in major venues, like Carnegie Hall and so forth. They’ve done it off the back of this hutzpah.”
And Australians have a very different attitude, don’t they?
“It’s a different attitude, and I love that contrast. I don’t think one’s right or one’s wrong. By avoiding voice over, I’m laying it in front of the audience and saying, ‘What do you think? What about these guys over here?’ Meanwhile, these people over here are doing this!”
Are you going to continue mixing things up with your work?
“Definitely. I never know what the next thing is going to be, and sometimes things just walk through the door, like Highly Strung. Ulrike came to see us and then this journey began. I love the process of documentary and I love the fact that you never know where it’s going to take you. It doesn’t matter what you think, or what your preconceptions were about the subject, life will take its own path and you just have to catch the moments. There are crucial moments, and if you’re too fixated thinking, ‘I know what this film is about’, then you can miss the real moment that counts.”
That still happens, even in these highly budgeted films?
“Absolutely. Even more so, because sometimes the machine intervenes. The basic element of it is that I try to shoot scenes with actors, as if they will never happen again. Sometimes, that’s exactly the case. There are certain things that happen that you cannot predict, and if you’re too cut and dry in your thinking process about what a scene or what dialogue means in a scene, you can find yourself turning your back just as a real moment happens that you should be honing in on. I’ll tell you a specific example. Towards the very end of Shine, we were shooting in The Adelaide Town Hall, and Geoffrey Rush had just done the scene of David’s comeback concert. We were on a dolly pushing in to get him, to take in the applause of the crowd. We pushed in and then I say to the cameraman, ‘Okay, push out. Great, I think we’ve got it, let’s cut.’ We cut. I looked up, and Geoffrey’s hands were up to his face and he was in tears. The unrepeatable moment when Geoffrey just sobbed, and it was real and it was unanticipated. I said, ‘I had no idea that you were going to do that’ and he said, ‘I didn’t either, I just suddenly felt like they were applauding for me!’ We literally just cut, and I was ready to have a conversation about the next set up when I just looked back and Geoffrey was still in the moment. If we hadn’t got it, we damn well couldn’t make it happen again. I’ve learned to be close to the camera and to always be able to make eye contact with the actor. When you say cut, I want the first pair of eyes that they look at to be mine. So that I can immediately go, ‘Okay, great.’ The worst thing for an actor is when they feel surrounded by technology and that nobody cares. Somebody just goes ‘action’, and they have to be brilliant.”
Do you think it’s a contrast to the bigger budget [films that you’ve made]?
“Some of the same principals apply, and the documentary work that I’ve done has hugely informed the way that I shoot movies. No matter how well planned everything is, magic will only happen from time to time. And you have to be ready to catch it, as if it’ll never happen again. If everybody isn’t on the ball, you can miss the real magic of a scene.”
Highly Strung is released in select cinemas from May 19.
