David Wenham Says Making Force Of Destiny Was "A Profound Experience"

Every piece of work an artist creates has elements of the personal and intimate, even if those elements aren't evident at first glance. In the case of acclaimed filmmaker Paul Cox, who was born in Holland but has lived and worked in Australia for much of his life, such elements tend to be at the forefront. It has been that way in his best-known films, such as Lonely Hearts, Man Of Flowers and My First Wife, and it's certainly the case with his latest, Force Of Destiny.

The film follows Robert, a sculptor diagnosed with potentially fatal liver cancer, as he confronts the possibility of death while waiting in hope of a transplant that could save his life. On top of all that, he meets Maya, finally finding the great love he has long searched for. It's decidedly personal material for Cox to tackle, given that he himself was diagnosed with the same disease six years ago, received a life-saving transplant and met a woman he considers the love of his life.

According to Cox's friend and colleague David Wenham, who plays Robert in Force Of Destiny, making the film was "quite a profound experience".

"There are 1,600 people on one list in one Melbourne hospital, and most of those people will die."

"All of his work comes from a sense of who Paul is and what he has experienced, but none more so than this," he says. "He describes being diagnosed with liver cancer as 'dancing on the edge of the void', which is a very poetic, Paul Cox way of putting it. And with this film, I think it was a project where everyone involved in it — and there weren't that many people, because Paul works with a small crew and a limited number of actors — was there specifically for Paul because they knew how personal this film was to him."

For Wenham, playing Robert ("who Paul insists is not him but bears a close resemblance to him", the actor smiles) didn't come with a sense of responsibility as such but it was accompanied by a desire to pay due respect to Cox and the situation he went through.

"I wanted to portray Robert in a way he would have been proud of," he says. "I was fortunate in that I knew Paul all through the period of time from diagnosis and illness through to his transplant. The best form of research for me was a book he wrote called Tales From The Cancer Ward, in which he very, very clearly articulated what he went through — that was extremely helpful to me. But Paul wanted the character to be a version of myself as well, and there's parts of me in there. I found myself thinking about my own mortality, as you do as you get older."

Despite the somewhat dark subject matter, Wenham says the process of making Force Of Destiny was "incredibly upbeat".

"Paul has an incredible sense of humour, as do many of the people involved in the film," he says. "So, strangely, [the process] was exactly the opposite of what you might think."

And while the film is an earthy, spiritual meditation on life, love and death, it also has a practical, forthright message.

"I think the driving force behind the film, and why Paul wanted to make it, was that through his own experiences he realised the power of transplantation," says Wenham. "Australia has one of the lowest organ donation rates in the world. There are 1,600 people on one list in one Melbourne hospital, and most of those people will die because we don't have enough organ donors."