We Call Upon the Author

If you’re a casual Nick Cave fan (and do those exist?), 20,000 Days on Earth probably isn’t for you. But anyone who’s delved into Murder Ballads or Prayers on Fire or Grinderman 2 will likely be fascinated.

Some of the documentary feels like free-flowing cinéma vérité type stuff—the scenes of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds working on “Higgs Boson Blues” in studio, for example—while some of it is highly composed and even appears scripted. Whatever the case, it’s all cool stuff, as is Cave’s ability to find subtext in absolutely everything.

Little time is spent on Cave’s film career—though Ray Winstone, who stars in the Cave-written The Proposition appears—but when there’s this much music, that’s not much of a complaint. Plus, Kylie Minogue pops up to talk about “Where the Wild Roses Grow,” her mid-‘90s single with Cave, and former Bad Seeds Blixa Bargeld talks about how they could have used an editor back in the day, which is a funny conversation considering the 2013 track “Higgs Boson Blues” tops seven minutes.

But this is art, and art doesn’t follow rules except one: The secret to Cave’s success seems to be write, write and keep writing. And that formula has produced a hell of a lot of good work.

Directed by Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard

With Cave, Bargeld and Minogue

Jean Cocteau Cinema
NR
97 min.