A moving look at Michael Hutchence
Mystify: Michael Hutchence (M, 102 mins) Directed by Richard Lowenstein Reviewed by Graeme Tuckett ★★★1⁄2
In the mid-1980s and early-90s, when Michael Hutchence and INXS were indisputably one of the more famous bands around, I was far too much of a snob to like them.
I was more your Flying Nun with a side-order of Yello and Shriekback kid, the latter of which seemed stupefyingly hip to me at the time, but is pretty cringeinducing now.
But even us proto-hipster tragics
weren’t completely immune to the charms of bouncing around on a pub dance floor to the strains of Need You Tonight, provided the lights were very dim and the beer was cheap and plentiful.
And then, around the early and mid-90s, we started to hear more of INXS – or at least, of singer Michael Hutchence – in the gossip rags than we did in the pop charts.
Hutchence spun profoundly off the rails, eventually falling into a relationship with Paula Yates – then still married to Saint Bob Geldof – and taking his own life in 1997.
Mystify is director and friend Richard Lowenstein’s portrait of the artist.
After the expected and mostly unexceptional early years, painted in via home movies and the overused recollections from family and friends, we arrive at Hutchence’s years of global fame, which he seems to have mostly been dealing with pretty well.
Then, one night in 1992, in Copenhagen, Hutchence – heading home from a party with thenpartner Helena Christensen – got into a dispute with the cab driver.
There was scuffle, which resulted in Hutchence’s head hitting the cobblestones.
And from then on, according to the people who knew him best, Hutchence’s entire disposition changed.
The sunny, cheerful and mostly very likeable man he had been, became morose, moody and unpredictable.
Lowenstein knew Hutchence for decades. He directed him in the feature film Dogs in Space and shot many of INXS’ videos. Lowenstein also made the engrossing and brilliant Autoluminescent, about The Birthday Party’s guitarist Rowland S Howard.
Mystify is unapologetically one for the fans. But, as someone who thought he didn’t particularly care about Hutchence’s story, I was moved.
A purported film about a popstar becomes an unannounced film about the tragedy and the horror of head injuries and the still little-understood and subtle damage they can wreak.