MIFF NOTES: The Man From Mo'wax (2016, Dir. Matthew Jones)

Why? Are? These? Career? Documentaries? Of? Famous? Talents. Always? So? Fucking? Depressing?

Why can these people never recognise and harness the core of their genius?

Why can they never see that patterns in their lives aren't just recurrent bad luck?

Why can't we keep having more of the nice things from their heydays?

The Man From Mo'Wax: James Lavelle, columnist, record label owner, A&R man, embodies the best and the worst of all these ideas, in that he was the ideas and he wanted more. His talent was recognising talent but he wanted to have other talents. So he became "producer", "DJ", "frontman", "curator". And in doing so he repeatedly shot himself in the foot. He shorted his connections and drifted away from his instinct for talent.

Sad.

Director Matthew Jones tries his darnedest to swim against the tide with this career spanning doco. The opening of The Man From Mo'Wax and its extensive focus on 'Psyence Fiction' rides Lavelle's charisma and lays substantial groundwork for the film's unravelling back end.

It is thrilling to watch Jones' distillation of Lavelle in his cocky and quite brilliant youth (he was spinning in pubs at the age of 14), through signings of the likes of DJ Krush, Blackalicious and DJ Shadow to his label Mo'Wax, which he then sold to A&M, and culminating in the release of his and DJ Shadow's masterwork. The spiral is inevitable though. It begins with the folding of A&M and the falling out with Shadow.

Depressing as it is to watch, Jones' revealing interviews with Lavelle and most of the other players go deep into the nature of the music industry, which Lavelle's brand of creation helped to shape, at least in the UK. The currency of ideas and the nature of artistic ownership hang heavy on Lavelle's life and there are lessons there that nobody is ever going to listen to.

That is the tragedy of all this. The cocky brilliance of creative fire never learns from the tired remnant-creativity of experience. It can't. If it did, it wouldn't create. It's got to get the art out before it self-immolates.

The trick is to not burn your friends in the process.

★★★☆

Trailer:

The Man From Mo'wax screened as part of the Melbourne International Film Festival 2016.

You can check out other films from the festival here.