Straight off the plane from New York, where he is mid-production on the Netflix series “Black Rabbit,” director Justin Kurzel debuted his new documentary “Ellis Park” at the Melbourne International Film Festival.
“Ellis Park” follows the eventful life of composer Warren Ellis and the wildlife sanctuary he co-founded on the Indonesian island of Sumatra. Combining Ellis’ irreverent humor and unbounded creativity with the moving story of the sanctuary’s role as a home for animals rescued from the black market, “Ellis Park” is set to be one of the most impactful Australian documentaries of recent years.
Following the film’s premiere at Melbourne’s Astor Theatre, Kurzel said making the documentary has profoundly influenced his forthcoming productions. Alongside “Black Rabbit” these include “The Order” — a wintry thriller starring Jude Law, Nicholas Hoult, Tye Sheridan, Jurnee Smollett, and Marc Maron set to premiere at the Venice Film Festival — and the series “The Narrow Road to the Deep North,” starring Jacobi Elordi, Odessa Young and Ciarán Hinds, currently in post-production.
“When we went over to Indonesia, we thought we were going to be seeing a lot of events,” Kurzel said at a post-screening Q&A. “Animal traffickers and police at the port, some of the rescues, but none of that ended up happening while we were there.”
“Creatively, it was pretty scary. Usually, you go into a film with very strong ideas, and I realized very quickly that I had to let the people, and Warren and the animals flow into the storytelling. Being there, what I was most inspired by was how you repair the relationship between humans and animals. Seeing the care and love that people at the park put back into these animals and how the animals start to trust again and find that peace again after they have had this enormous violence done to them, that was pretty extraordinary. Going to Ellis Park was life-changing for me. I didn’t come out the same person.”
Kurzel has built his career on films that explore the psychology of violence, often based on real characters and events. “Snowtown,” his 2015 adaptation of “Macbeth,” “True History of the Kelly Gang,” and “Nitram” have given the Australian director a reputation as a safe pair of hands for challenging material. “Ellis Park” is his first feature documentary. Filmed in early 2023, Kurzel left the verdancy and humidity of late-summer Sumatra for sub-zero Calgary to helm “The Order.”
Adapted by “King Richard” screenwriter Zach Baylin from Kevin Flynn and Gary Gerhardt’s nonfiction book “The Silent Brotherhood,” “The Order” tells the story of a spate of bank robberies across the Pacific Northwest in the early 1980s. While law enforcement and the FBI struggle to predict where the thieves will strike next, a lone agent stationed in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, played by Jude Law, deduces that the robberies are part of a larger, much more sinister operation.
Kurzel describes directing the film straight after “Ellis Park” as like moving to “a different discipline.”
“You can bring freedom and a looseness to tight scripts, and I didn’t think you could before,” he told IndieWire. “I thought that everything had to be controlled, but there is room for spontaneity and changing things on the day now and to allow for something to evolve. I used to really worry about what to do next, about whether it was the right thing. After I did ‘Assassin’s Creed,’ I thought, ‘Why did I do that? I wasn’t ready to do something like that,’ and I was full of regret. But now that I look back on it, it happened for a reason. There is an element that is really wonderful when you decide to leap into something and get caught up in the act of doing it.”
Kurzel credits this new approach with informing how he drew performances from actors in “The Order.” Directing always means working with myriad uncontrollable elements, whether it is the weather in Sumatra that means an animal rescue will need to take place another day, or an actor comes to the set angry and with an attitude that changes the performance he had in mind.
“I used to fight that a lot,” Kurzel said. “But now I love it. I love being open to this feeling that we’re all here for one moment and for a reason. Whatever performance comes out now is the marking of this day, and that can never be taken away.”
Following his visit to Venice and after completing the productions that he has signed on for, Kurzel said that, over the next four to five years, he hopes to direct a series of feature films using the same ensemble of actors to tell thematically linked stories, inspired by the collaborative approach of directors like Mike Leigh and John Cassavetes.
“Right from the beginning, these films would be written with the actors, evolved with the actors. Everyone owns a piece of it,” he said. “That process really fascinates me.”
Rather than exploring the technological boundaries of filmmaking or pushing for auteur control, Kurzel is turning inward to the director-actor relationship, one that has been enriched by directing “Ellis Park.”
“When you start making bigger films and getting offers and the ambition that comes in with that, you tend to get lost among the toys and the expectations you put on yourself. Films like ‘Ellis Park’ and ‘Nitram’ allow me to embrace those strong instincts that I had about why I wanted to be a film director. I’ve realized that I need to be searching for these sorts of films, as well as doing films that are larger in budget and scale.”
“The Order” was a relatively straightforward shoot, he said, partly due to the experience in Indonesia and the way that the production was characterized by extensive collaboration with the crew and a “best idea wins” approach.
“That’s the most brilliant thing about making a documentary,” he said, smiling. “It always beats you. That’s why I loved making ‘Ellis Park’ so much, and why I think it has such an enormous amount of hope and is so inspiring. Because out of the shadows and the darkness around these animals, there is that incredible beauty and trust.”
