Pardon the bluntness of my impending vulgarity but I must ask: How the fuck did I go my entire life without getting into Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds? After just seeing his pseudo documentary, 20,000 Days On Earth, for the second time, I think I have an idea. There is a scene in the movie in which Nick Cave is recounting a moment during his childhood, where his father has put his sobbing sister to bed. He then leaves the room as she lay there crying. A young Cave then says, “poop” and then “shit” to console her. As her tears stop and she begins to laugh, he sees the door open and close and realizes his father had not left but had been looming there the entire time, watching over them, leaving only when his sister had been cheered up. I think that sort of encapsulates Cave’s career, to me anyway. He has always been there despite my not knowing it and this film was my “poop, shit” moment, where I discovered how amazing he is and now he can quietly leave the room and allow me to discover everything he’s done, and continues to do, on my own.
The film itself is a trip. It begins with sound of a child crying and then recounts 19,999 days since his birth, through a series of stacked televisions, playing clips of his past performances, spanning his entire career. It ends with Nick waking up on his 20,000 day on earth and saying, “At the end of the 20th century, I ceased to be a human being.”
We are then taken through a fictional day in his life. It is part drama, part documentary, and fully inspiring, featuring cameos from current and former bandmates, actor Ray Winstone, and Kylie Minogue (who Cave recored his only big hit with). Without giving too much away, Nick talks about important moments in his life with his psychoanalyst, tells stories with bandmates, and teaches the audience how strange and wonderful life can be. The Nina Simone tale is worth the price of admission by itself.
There is a scene towards the end of the film, where the Bad Seeds are performing and Nick has the front row in a complete trance, which I’m told is common at his shows. The crowd is all female except one rather large dude. But here’s the thing, he is absolutely hypnotized and you almost want to laugh but at this point you totally understand. It is a strange, surreal moment that the directors, Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard, captured flawlessly.
I walked away with a few things: a new band to obsess over — who have already recorded a lifetime of music — and an amazing, inspirational film I will be watching forever. I’m not sure what happened this year but I now have two films (Jodorowsky’s Dune and 20,000 Days on Earth) that I can watch when I feel like everything is terrible, and know that the second I finish watching them, I’ll have a fire raging so hard under my ass, I’ll be able to paint the god damn Sistine Chapel. I can only close with this: start listening to Nick Cave if you haven’t already, and see this film!
Review by Timothy White. You can follow him on Twitter @TipToTheHip
