Photo: Press
"At the end of the 20th Century, I ceased to be a human being," says Nick Cave in the opening scene, with a frame so close-up you can see the veins of his eyeballs. "I wake, I write, I eat, I watch TV...I'm a cannibal - looking for someone to cook in a pot."
Everything you've read about 20,000 Days On Earth is true. It's an absolutely enthralling film. Beyond being an unprecedented portrait of this artist as an older man, it's a seismic achievement in story-telling - eagerly both dispelling myths and embellishing them.
This, is what a Werner Herzog 'rock doc' would look like.
Framed as a day in the life of one of the most menacing and unmoveable figures in music, 20,000 Days follows Cave about a less than ordinary routine. Sure there's the standard waking beside his wife and muse Susie, some family time and rather heart-warming bumblings and banter with Bad Seed, friend and long-time collaborator Warren Ellis, but beyond that this is like no other 'documentary' you've ever seen.
The DNA of the Cave we know today is explored through a string of revealing sequences: a psychiatry session about his childhood and relationship with women with Darian Leader, a telling of the rising chaos and ultimate demise of earlier band The Birthday Party with a trip to his personal archives, recording sessions for the Bad Seeds' flawless 2013 album Push The Sky Away, and 'dream' scenes where he imagines conversations with past collaborators in the car as he lends a lift to Kylie Minogue, Ray Winstone and Blixa Bargeld.
His live persona is explained as he discusses his notion of finding one audience member and making them feel absolutely terrified, before blistering concert footage shows a performer without fear and relent - feeding the bloodthirsty desire of his howling cult following.
It's been a strong year for music films already, but the best of them stand alone. While Jarvis Cocker used Sheffield as the canvas of his backstory in 'PULP: A Film About Life, Death and Supermarkets', and The National made a film about brotherhood with the band as merely a footnote in 'Mistaken For Strangers', Cave's 'story' is told through the prism of his own artistic vision - a grand narrative of characters, dreams, nightmares, heaven, hell, horror, angels, demons and otherworldly things, but ultimately deep-set in reality.
As Cave himself calls this world depicted: "This shimmering space, where imagination and reality intersect - where all life and tears and joy exist, this is the place, this is where we live."
As the film closes on Cave eating pizza with his sons, a shot of the man has been taken from every angle: restless polymath, musical monolith, addict, father, friend, husband - but essentially, the human behind the legend of the beast. Through the eyes of Cave, they've captured his essence - and there's nothing quite like it.
For information and screenings of 20,000 Days On Earth, visit here
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