FILM REVIEW: "20,000 Days On Earth"

Cover design for 20,000 Days On Earth.  Photo courtesy of DraftHouseFilms.com.

Near the end of the film 20,000 Days On Earth, Nick Cave, with the Bad Seeds behind him, performs among a throng of fans. He grabs the hand of a young girl, pressing her palm onto his chest as he whispers into the microphone, "Can you feel my heartbeat?" He repeats the line, at the end of “Higgs Boson Blues,” until the fan can only look him in the eye and nod, yes.

   When the song ends, Cave jumps back onto the stage, his energy restored. "When you enter the heart of the song," Cave explains in the film about performing live, "you can be taken away...and feel godlike."

   The improvisational documentary by filmmakers Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard is meant to play like one full fictional day in the life of one of rock and roll's greatest frontmen. The audience sees how the man is currently living and working and encounters a glimmer of insight into his creative process.

   Throughout 20,000 Days On Earth, the Bad Seeds are hard at work on their fifteenth album, Push The Sky Away. Cave and his right-hand man, multi-instrumentalist Warren Ellis, work on an off-the-cuff song about Lionel Richie. They share a lunch and reminisce about a Nina Simone performance at the Cave-curated Meltdown Festival in 1999 that left them with mouths agape. Ellis rides an elliptical and conducts a children’s choir for the recording of “Push The Sky Away.” The viewer is given a rare opportunity to gaze deeply into Cave's dark blue eyes as he sings.

   The film does not follow the basic linear retelling of the average rock documentary. Instead, it’s Cave offering stories of his early days with Birthday Party, growing up a brooding boy in a small Australian town and balancing church life with drugs when he was a young adult.

   At one point during Cave’s day, he stops to revisit old photographs and various pieces of memorabilia from his life. He seems delighted, even giddy, to be pouring over and celebrating his past.

   Rather than simply regurgitating old clips from a storied career, what the filmmakers have done is show their subject's emotional reaction to his past. This is where the film succeeds most.

   Seeing a bubbly Nick Cave, grinning from ear to ear, looking over photos of himself isn’t exactly the image one would expect from the cagey prince of goth. He isn’t the most forthcoming about personal details so it’s welcoming to witness him acknowledge his own personal and creative past.

   The film intermittently is cut with Cave opening up to his therapist. The whole time the therapist looks just as transfixed as the audience by what his patient is telling him.

   When asked about his first sexual experience, Cave discusses being turned on at 15 by a girl with black hair and a very white face. He insists the experience wasn’t outrightly sexual, but admits that her contrasting features flipped a switch inside him. At that moment he became aware of the power of arousal--a power that would go on to greatly influence his songwriting.

   The most stunning revelation of the film is that the man with eyes like coal has his own set of fears. As Cave drives through rainy Bristol and navigates his day, he looks back on the past with a host of guests. With longtime collaborator and friend Kylie Minogue in the backseat of his car, he discusses the vulnerabilities of being a rock star.

   His whole life, he explains, he imagined becoming the man he is today: bold, acerbic, lyrical, confident, a showman. The success of becoming a famous persona has outweighed his inner self and he finds it difficult to retreat to any sort of normal life. Not that he would want any soft of “normal” life.

   Ultimately the film inspires the creative heart to dig into something deep, something profound. We live in our work. Our art is our reality. Cave talks a lot about memory and how our personal histories are shaped only by what we remember. His biggest fear, he says, is to lose his memory because it would then be as though he were never there. Songwriting for him is the net that captures his life experiences as he finds a perspective on them that makes sense.

   Find out where 20,000 Days On Earth is playing in your city here.