Before the Bad Seeds, there was The Birthday Party, the seminal Australian band that marked the beginning of Nick Cave’s career. This is the first time that the members themselves have told the story in the first person, from the start to the collapse, and been candid about those formative years. Particularly remembered for their anarchic concerts where anything could happen, the film comprises archive footage and photographs, mixed with animation.
We’ll find here the early Nick Cave, a preacher exposing is body to violence, excessive in his gestures and words, an imposing narrator of decadence. But it’s not only him we find in “Mutiny in Heaven”. The Birthday Party, an Australian band and a key name in post-punk, were Nick Cave, Roland S. Howard, Mick Harvey, Phill Calvert and Tracy Pew, each of them a larger-than-life character. Ian White’s documentary tells their story, as brief as it is intense. For them, life in the band was life itself, with no distinction whatsoever between the stage, the studio and the time spent between them. For the first time, their story is told on film. Between Melbourne, London and Berlin, from their beginnings as Boys Next Door to being considered the most dangerous band on the planet, we follow their meteoric rise and inevitable implosion, given the intensity of those six years of life together. A memorable piece of music history, told by the band themselves as it all unfolded. (Mário Lopes)
