The makers of Such Is Life: The Troubled Times of Ben Cousins have crafted an
excellent documentary film unprecedented in the world of Australian
professional sport.
Characterised by frank talking head interviews
with sport and media professionals who charted Cousins' rise and fall;
with those who worked with, above and around him at football clubs the West Coast Eagles and Richmond Tigers; with friends and
family and with the charismatic Cousins himself, Such is Life offers a brutal
insight into the pressures of Australian sporting celebrity, and penetrates deeply into the private battles of an individual
who has been as obsessive in his pursuit of on-field excellence as in
his recreational substance binges.
Complaints that the documentary downplays the downside of drug use are misguided. There's footage of a drugged-up Cousins twitching in his kitcken; looking physically wasted while detoxing at a friend's property in Cottesloe; emotional anecdotes from his family about witnessing their beloved Ben's self-destructive behaviour; distressing audio from a 911 call made after Cousins had been on a five-day cocaine binge in the US.
Not to mention his dramatic, devastating fall from grace at the Eagles, where he lost first his captaincy, then his place at the club, after having been an inspirational superstar for 238 games; and recollections of the death in October 2007 of Cousins' 'great mate', former fellow Eagle Chris Mainwaring, of a drug overdose. These are real consequences. Such Is Life is a film with a powerful, implicit moral to communicate.
In being broadcast on a commercial network, what Such is Life gains in
exposure it loses in momentum. To its credit, Channel Seven kept the commercial breaks in last night's
broadcast to a minimum, and even these were flanked with promos for addict
support services, in keeping with the film's cautionary tone.
Yet one of the film's strengths is its relentlessness. We are
drawn with Cousins to the compulsive limits of physical training and the pursuit of perfection, to
the vertiginous heights of fame, to the joyous, frightening maelstrom of drug use, to the pits of public shame and on towards
the arc of redemption. The commercial breaks, a necessary
evil in this medium, nonetheless damage the integrity of this
empathetic experience.
On the other hand, the decision to cleave the film in two and screen
it over successive nights can only be described as a cynical ratings
grab. That statement is not disproved by the fact that part two will
be married to a televised discussion forum. This seems to be more an
attempt to build hype around a televised product, rather than a
serious attempt to understand the core issues.
It is disappointing to
see Seven take this route.
Few would deny that whatever his wrongdoings, Cousins has, like a drug, been used
and abused by the media. That's a central theme of Such is Life,
underscored by Cousins' bewilderment at returning from a stint
in rehab to find his personal
struggle had been made a public issue, fair game for anyone
with a soap box to mount or an axe to grind.
It is unlikely that this
treatment did anything other than exacerbate the problem.
The mistreatment continues. Cousins is no angel, but neither is he a
demon; just a man with a problem that he's fought to contain.
His story has mirrors in the lives of many people who have battled
addiction. Seven's treatment of it borders on exploitative.
Tim Kroenert is Assistant Editor of Eureka Street. He is a contributor to Inside Film and The Big Issue magazines, and his articles and reviews have appeared in Melbourne's The Age and Brisbane's Courier-Mail. He was Chair of the Interfaith Jury at the 2009 St George Brisbane International Film Festival.