Director Scott Hicks has turned his focus to music-related subjects before: most memorably in his 1996 masterpiece Shine and also in the 2007 documentary Glass: A Portrait of Philip in Twelve Parts. In the latter, Hicks got up close and personal with the legendary composer, following him around for a year and taking a detailed look at his day-to-day life. At times the film felt oddly skewed to Glass as a person rather than focusing on the art or the artist – it even featured an oddly long sequence capturing him preparing pizzas in his holiday home.
The film-maker gravitates in the other direction with his new documentary Highly Strung, which opened the 2015 Adelaide film festival. Hicks mostly focuses on the professional over the personal as he investigates string quartets and the wider culture of stringed instruments.
The film starts with the gathering of a new team of musicians in the Adelaide-based Australian String Quartet (ASQ). They are playing on a rare matched set of Guadagnini instruments, crafted in the 18th century and worth many millions of dollars. Guadagnini, like Stradivarius, was an Italian master whose majestic-sounding creations – believed by some to be unparalleled – have been the source of much mystery and speculation.
Did these legendary luthiers add secret ingredients to their varnish or spend months locating a piece of immaculate wood? After introducing the quartet members (violinists Kristian Winther and Ioana Tache, viola player Stephen King and cellist Sharon Draper) Hicks goes wandering. We soon find ourselves in the company of elite Stradivarius-wielding New York hipsters who convolute an increasingly unwieldly structure.
The film digresses into a plethora of subtopics including the discussion of how instruments are made, stored and replicated; the environments where they sound best; the roles and responsibilities of different quartet members; what parts hedge-fund managers play in dealing with these incredibly valuable assets; and whether the mysterious old instruments are indeed better than the new ones.
Meanwhile, back at home, the group is imploding: personality clashes have created a schism between the four players and it may be irreconcilable. The film finds its most interesting human-oriented story in this familiar storyline: a band of musos butting heads and falling out.
The film-maker’s passion for the material is obvious, sometimes infectious, and his approach largely instinctual. Hicks pursues all the interesting beats; the problem is that there are too many - a whole damn symphony of them. With so much quality footage (a blessed but bittersweet position for a documentarian), knowing what to leave out becomes more important than what to keep in.
A meandering structure makes 99 minutes feel longer than it should and a closing text insert updating the audience on one of the subject’s employment status feels borderline mean-spirited, even if that wasn’t the intention. And while a musical solo near the end is beautifully shot and performed, you can’t help but wonder if it was included at this point in the running time simply because the scene takes place in front of a pretty sunset.
Highly Strung touches on many points of discussion, including a recent blindfold test that returned results indicating professional players prefer new instruments to old ones – a fascinating revelation very quickly brushed by. Juggling nutty topics like that with the emotional brouhaha brewing can’t have been an easy task, and Hicks doesn’t quite get the group to spill the beans on the subject.
His other explorations, while splashed with compelling facts and stirring music, keep pulling an intermittently interesting but messy documentary in different directions.
