20 000 jours sur Terre

We open with Nick Cave in bed. Soon he's half-naked before the mirror. But this semi-staged documentary is no warts-and-all exposé. The lighting is kind to Cave's boyish body, and his voice-over is as precisely prepared as it is passionate and poetic. This rehearsed vulnerability sets the tone for how directors Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard will portray their elusive subject.

Their approach provides Cave with an appropriate level of control. Control is essential to the process of self-mythologising. Cave is aware that myth is what gives popular artists their enduring legacy. It's not dishonesty. Myth contains truth: the truth of how art (and the artist) makes us feel, the senses it triggers and the images it conjures. And what images Cave has conjured over the decades; from surreal punk, through broken Americana, through dark ballads and blaring gospel rock and a parade of delicious dirges.

The focus on the recording of Push the Sky Away means we hear very little of The Bad Seeds' earlier work. We glimpse The Birthday Party (and a very amusing vignette it is). But Cave and his myriad members have gone through various phases, and we get no sense of these because we hear nothing of them. Do not go into this film expecting a retrospective. Do not expect chronology, or even much revelation. Do not expect to bring a virginal friend and open their eyes to the strange, bleak, sentimental narratives of Brighton's finest immigrant. And yet it is a film for virtually everyone; for those harbouring an idea and a glimmer of interest in the creative method.

You'll know from the trailer that Ray Winstone and Kylie Minogue drop by for a ride in Cave's car. These scenes are more than just elaborate name-drops. They're framed as natural exchanges perhaps imagined or drawn from memory. Most moving is the conversation with ex-Bad Seed Blixa Bargeld, which has the air of some latent regret being cauterised.

Toward the beginning of the film there are a number of intense dialogues between Cave and the psychoanalyst Darian Leader. These scenes are deeply intimate and engaging, and it's a pity they fall away. It's indicative of the broader sense that 20,000 Days is truncated. Surely there's more footage. There is, surely, a three-hour edit of this movie, just as compelling and original and humorous. Yes, this is a double-edged criticism.

Elegantly shot and exquisitely edited, there's warmth in every frame of this movie, whether we're in the archives, scouring scuzzy photographs from Cave's youth, or in the pleasingly chaotic space surrounding the typewriter of dreams. Forsyth and Pollard carefully walk the line between hagiography and dehumanisation: Cave comes off as neither a fallen angel nor a mad recluse. But he does emerge an enigma. And that's okay, because that's how the man himself reckons we like our rock stars: slightly unreal, swaggering and contradictory, and bigger than God. I'm inclined to agree.

I really like Nick Cave. He has cameos in two of my all-time favourite films, The Assassination of Jesse James and Wings of Desire. His score for the former is my all-time favourite too, a collaboration with Warren Ellis of whom he's seen hanging out together here. This documentary, 20,000 Days On Earth, is perhaps coming a little too late or early to paint the most fascinating portrait of the rock artist, though it would have been a less catchy title. His last album is good, not great, perhaps played a little too safe. Nevertheless, his creative process is still interesting to watch as we're allowed access into the recording studio. But this isn't a straightforward documentary. It has bits of verite, fiction and interviews.

It's a shame the fiction isn't as well handled and it comes off as contrived and stilted, including when the mystical celebrity cameos keep Cave company in car journeys. It's the way the film is shot too which uses the type of photography that's fit for HD TV rather than cinema though it has its moments. However, it makes up for all that for being very insightful. The interviews are no holds barred with penetratingly honest questions. Cave explains that his biggest fear is losing his memory, and I wish the film took that as its primary thesis, looking into Cave's memory instead of an irreverent day in the life. It does have its trips into nostalgia and excels in those moments. 20,000 Days On Earth is still a very good doc thanks to its subject matter, but it needed more focus and guidance.

7/10

Let me preface by saying that I am a Nick Cave fan. I see a lot of live music and a Grinderman concert I saw a few years ago is by far the best show I have ever seen in my life. Cave is a force, he has people around him who fit and compliment his energy.

I understand the poor reviews. I get it. Especially when you watch the special features clip about Nick Cave at one point wanting to erect a bronze statue of himself on a horse in his home town in Australia, a town that he says doesn't really mean much to him now. Even the "archivist" asked if Cave was joking. Cave said he was/is serious.

It doesn't matter if he was/is serious.

My take-away from this film, beautifully constructed and filmed (and yes, there's a lot of self-serving and navel-gazing, some eye-rolling monologue) is this: keep making and keep doing to create a life with any meaning, no matter what it is you make/do. None of this, nothing anyone writes or sings or creates will really matter decades or (if lucky/effective/memorable) centuries from now.

I tend to be really embarrassed for people who think too much of themselves or who lay it all out for everyone to see (I can't even watch an episode of American Idol, I get so uncomfortable). But this film helped me put it all in perspective. The days are counting on for all of us. So go on, get it done, get your bronze butt up on that horse and ride.

The only thing I've been introduced with when it comes to Nick Cave is his score for The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, which is pretty much my favorite film score ever. Such soothing, haunting, mesmerizing music. In many ways, this film is exactly like that. I always find it interesting when filmmakers play around with what a documentary really is, and this does just that. It's very melancholic in its tone, very introspective. It has fascinating examples of music being created and just how much Cave puts himself into his music, while still balancing it all and not coming off like an ego project. Even for non-fans this is recommended.

Nick Cave is a very special musician. In fact musician may be the wrong descriptor.

He's a very special writer that specialises in music. He has Warren Ellis and his many collaborators to dial up the music side of the equation.

in this documentary, that looks like a movie, that, yes, he co-wrote, you find yourself immersed in the mind of a genius for an hour and a half as he discusses his life, his loves, his inspirations and his deep internal psychology in something approaching forensic detail.

He is a very beautiful man.

He talks painfully honestly at times about everything that is true to him. His 'muse' - his wife Susie who lies, back turned to camera in bed with him as the film opens.

We see half glimpses, stolen moments, of her off and on through the film but little more. We see a photo of her projected on the wall of his archivist's office.

She is as beautiful as he is.

Later we see Cave guzzle pizza with their twin sons, arm around the shoulders of one of them, devoid of comment/emotion, almost voyeuristically. It also spells L.O.V.E.

We see him kiss Warren Ellis full square on the lips as he visits his musical 'muse' on the occasion of a casual lunch of eels in black pasta. More love.

Cave carries an aura of love around with him. Yet he's often labelled with hate (partly because of the baggage of The Birthday Party have burdened him with. Grinderman, in this respect cannot help.)

We see him in the recording studio.

Gold dust. (Watching drummer Thomas Wydler as he twitches and mouths the rhythms is mesmeric.)

We see him crafting lyrics.

Gold dust. (His notebooks are works of art in their own right.)

We see him performing live.

Now, this is the thing. Anyone who has been to a Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds gig knows that no band on earth put in the same level of emotional commitment to their music; (perhaps with the exception of his faux-misogyny project Grinderman) Ellis all crazy violin fury, Cave all emotional connection.

It's this latter point that made the movie for me. He talks about how he ensnares individual audience members and then demonstrates it with a live performance of Higgs Boson Blues that reduced his female 'victim' to tears.

Me too. It was all too much. All too emotionally engrossing.

And then there's the craft...the soundtrack (obviously) the direction and the cinematography are all sublime. A special shout out has to go for editor, Jonathan Amos.

And the cameos; Kylie, Ray Winstone and Blixa Bargeld.

I'm left with a tantalising question. Is this the greatest film ever made about music?

I think it has claims on that. Notwithstanding School of Rock.

Nick Cave. {I love you man.)