20,000 Day on Earth isn't about Nick Cave, it's about all of us.
When most biopics are a narrative into an artist's life, 20,000 Days on Earth is a narrative into Nick Cave's soul. Profound, pragmatic and poetic, The Birthday Party and Bad Seeds singer creates empathy though movie.
I've seen a fair few of these docufilms. I love music and usually the story behind the musician, a song or an album adds a little colour. These documentaries tend to be fairly formulaic; opening with a montage and a couple of killer lines spoken by the artist in order to get your attention. Then it starts at the beginning, documenting their rise and ends with their inevitable fall.
20,000 Days on Earth opens in the most compelling and artistic way, like a movie. A wall of screens counting up to 20,000 showed Nick Cave at various stages of his life. Then we see him awake in bed with his wife.
We follow him going about his business. An average day in the life of Nick Cave. A day that takes us deep into his soul and everything that lingers there. Right from the beginning, he talks about cannibalising his wife and marriage for his art. We see him in his work space, an eclectic mix of artefacts intended to spark creativity. He just writes. And writes. And writes. Until real life stops him. Then he enters into a strange world.
Nick Cave, looking like a vampire who runs a second-hand car dealership, is funny looking fellow. In his music, he creates a gothic and intense atmosphere. I expected him to be odd. I thought I was going to enter the world of a dark eccentric. Instead, I was presented with a man who was so normal, it was refreshing.
He had a pretty standard childhood. At 19, he was rocked by the death of his father - a man who read him the first chapter of Nabokov's Lolita because of its literary brilliance and before his son's eyes, he transformed into the man he wanted to be.
He fell in love and married his muse with whom he has two children. A woman who he lists every attractive woman and erotic image he's ever seen and says that it all culminates in her. And he talks about his pretty ordinary adventures as a struggling artist meeting extraordinary people along the way.
This is beauty of Nick Cave; unlike most self-absorbed celebrities who are too busy navel-gazing, Nick Cave also looks outwardly. He sees everything, gets under the skin and figures out what makes it tick. He looked at a neighbour who painstakingly created a pornographic religious lightshow in his room and concluded that you could transform yourself with imagination. He reminisces over inviting Nina Simone to perform at Meltdown Festival and how she changed from a ferocious, nasty addict into a superstar once she sat at the piano. He speaks of himself (to Ray Winstone) that he turns into the person he wants to be when he's on stage.
He almost lectures when he declares that we should all know our limitations and these wonderful disasters, a blind solitary idea can be made into something spectacular with collaboration. He also talks about mythologising the memory of past lovers, not because he still feels for them but because of how he felt at the time. And that losing his memory is his biggest fear - as it's what he needs to build the stories and ultimately his art, as everything and everyone that has crossed his path has touched him in some way.
This is what makes this movie brilliant. It's not about his life, it's about him. And as he's an ordinary guy, it's something we can all relate to. These little nuggets of insight, these statements about life, these poetic prose, there's something that will make it feel like he's looking deep into your soul. A soul that yearns to be someone else.
I've seen a fair few of these docufilms. I love music and usually the story behind the musician, a song or an album adds a little colour. These documentaries tend to be fairly formulaic; opening with a montage and a couple of killer lines spoken by the artist in order to get your attention. Then it starts at the beginning, documenting their rise and ends with their inevitable fall.
20,000 Days on Earth opens in the most compelling and artistic way, like a movie. A wall of screens counting up to 20,000 showed Nick Cave at various stages of his life. Then we see him awake in bed with his wife.
We follow him going about his business. An average day in the life of Nick Cave. A day that takes us deep into his soul and everything that lingers there. Right from the beginning, he talks about cannibalising his wife and marriage for his art. We see him in his work space, an eclectic mix of artefacts intended to spark creativity. He just writes. And writes. And writes. Until real life stops him. Then he enters into a strange world.
Nick Cave, looking like a vampire who runs a second-hand car dealership, is funny looking fellow. In his music, he creates a gothic and intense atmosphere. I expected him to be odd. I thought I was going to enter the world of a dark eccentric. Instead, I was presented with a man who was so normal, it was refreshing.
He had a pretty standard childhood. At 19, he was rocked by the death of his father - a man who read him the first chapter of Nabokov's Lolita because of its literary brilliance and before his son's eyes, he transformed into the man he wanted to be.
He fell in love and married his muse with whom he has two children. A woman who he lists every attractive woman and erotic image he's ever seen and says that it all culminates in her. And he talks about his pretty ordinary adventures as a struggling artist meeting extraordinary people along the way.
This is beauty of Nick Cave; unlike most self-absorbed celebrities who are too busy navel-gazing, Nick Cave also looks outwardly. He sees everything, gets under the skin and figures out what makes it tick. He looked at a neighbour who painstakingly created a pornographic religious lightshow in his room and concluded that you could transform yourself with imagination. He reminisces over inviting Nina Simone to perform at Meltdown Festival and how she changed from a ferocious, nasty addict into a superstar once she sat at the piano. He speaks of himself (to Ray Winstone) that he turns into the person he wants to be when he's on stage.
He almost lectures when he declares that we should all know our limitations and these wonderful disasters, a blind solitary idea can be made into something spectacular with collaboration. He also talks about mythologising the memory of past lovers, not because he still feels for them but because of how he felt at the time. And that losing his memory is his biggest fear - as it's what he needs to build the stories and ultimately his art, as everything and everyone that has crossed his path has touched him in some way.
This is what makes this movie brilliant. It's not about his life, it's about him. And as he's an ordinary guy, it's something we can all relate to. These little nuggets of insight, these statements about life, these poetic prose, there's something that will make it feel like he's looking deep into your soul. A soul that yearns to be someone else.
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