20,000 DAYS ON EARTH

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4 stars
Twenty thousand days might seem like a long time, and it is. 658 months. 55 years. Or the lifespan of Nick Cave, Australia's quintessential singer / writer / actor / composer / icon. A man Rolling Stone calls an 'apocalyptic rock poet'.
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So when it came time to follow the well trodden path to a concert movie, rather than grab some actuality and go all Stones (Gimme Shelter), Cave goes somewhere else entirely. Part doco, part exposé, 20,000 Days On Earth is a creation unto itself as it reflects, reinforces and recreates the mythology of Nick Cave.

British duo Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard directed this collaboration in an effort to get to know the extroverted introvert as much as anyone can, while exploring his public entity, brand if you will, from a unique angle. Consequently, the film is a collection of scenarios in which Cave opens up about his life, the band, the creative process. Before you start yawning, forget the cliché of two heads and a recording desk yakking about long forgotten songs.

For once the cameras start rolling improvisation follows as Nick and Kylie go deep in a car (“none of that is staged”), Nick and ex-Bad Seed Blixa Bargeld work through their break up (“there was nothing left”), Nick and a psychoanalyst analyse Nick. There's more, and you'd expect no less from a man whose first sexual experience involved a 'kabuki like' girl who dressed him in women's clothing. Or so the story goes.

The brooding sensibility that wraps this highly polished confessional is light years from Led Zepplin's torpid biopic The Song Remains The Same; Cave's inspiration. “As much as it's flawed and boring and silly, they were reaching beyond themselves,” he once said. Unlike Facebooking Snapchatters whose pictures of lunch are served up as art. Their (our?) irrelevant desire for digital confirmation is a thread which runs also through his discourse. “A strand, deep underneath the film, is about our need to be photographed all the time.”

Accordingly Forsyth and Pollard's film slowly becomes an intangible creation that spins the telescope on its subject: the closer you get to Cave, the further away he seems to be. His public persona becomes more elusive, his mythology is magnified, more defined. “Being on stage meant I got to be that person I always wanted to be,” he said to Rolling Stone. Just who that person is remains uncertain, for in the end, after 20,000 days on earth, Nick Cave is still a work in progress.

// COLIN FRASER

Previewed at The Reel Room, Sydney on 4 August 2014
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STARRING
Nick Cave
Blixa Bargeld
Kylie Minogue
Ray Winstone

DIRECTOR
Iain Forsyth
Jane Pollard

SCREENWRITER
Documentary

COUNTRY
UK

CLASSIFICATION
M

RUNTIME
96 minutes

AUSTRALIAN
RELEASE DATE
August 21, 2014
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20,000 Days on Earth (2014) on IMDb
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