Reseñas de la crítica

There's a bracing, uproarious rule-breaking quality to every decision [Forsyth and Pollard] make, including how they use Cave's persona, his words and every image created to accompany his particular brand of philosophical ranting. The resulting film is a pop-art near-masterpiece as risk-taking, anthemic, ironic and emotionally involving as Cave himself at his very best.

As co-directors Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard have often stated, they had no interest in "demystifying" a legend; with their constructed settings and situations, they allow Cave to collaboratively build on it. No longer a human being, Cave is free to play whoever he likes on stage but secure enough to discuss his work concretely and lucidly...

What’s great about this “documentary” – Cave gets a script credit alongside the directors, which kind of invalidates the whole notion of hands-off documentary filmmaking – is that it delves deeply into Cave’s notoriously fussy creative process without ever becoming stodgy or dull. It’s the exact opposite, in fact.

“20,000 Days on Earth” is, in some ways, a traditional artist’s profile. One nevertheless gets the sense that the “Nick Cave” we’re presented with on camera is pretty much a construct. That doesn’t mean that he, or the film, is fake. Far from it. “20,000 Days on Earth” gets at a larger point: Art tells the truth by lying.

“20,000 Days on Earth” can be regarded as a genuine fake documentary, or a fake genuine one, but either way, this examination of the whys and wherefores of indie rock star Nick Cave is an unusual and nonformulaic cinematic enterprise and an adventurous film by any standard.

Less of a biography than a widescreen installation with script and music (Cave’s co-writing credit confirms the artifice), this flits between handsome neo-noir pastiche and ripe psychological melodrama.

For all its formal playfulness, [the film] is too starstruck by its subject to fully take the creative reins from him, letting Cave’s secondhand Romantic theories... stand as major insights when they’re perhaps best left in notebooks filed away in the memorial museum... Yet there’s an ambition to [it] work that’s hard to deny, as well as a refreshingly quixotic commitment to tweaking the generic conventions of the promotional piece they’re making even as they work safely within its bounds.

Yet for all the undeniable self-regard – we are very, very fond of ourselves – 20,000 Days on Earth remains an effective, occasionally moving piece of work. Forsyth and Pollard, long-term collaborators with Cave, have worked hard to concoct a visual and aural style that meshes with their subject’s singular sensibility.

Intelligently conceived and exquisitely crafted, it's also still on some level a promotional tool, and a product of Cave the sometime diary-keeper's dedicated self-regard. Whether that hint of narcissism or the commercial element involved takes some shine off the film's artistic achievement is one for debate, but Cave's writing credit suggests this is how he wants to present himself, and judging by the fierce-willed individual on display here, he's not one to be argued with.

Given the needs of access and modern stardom, of course, it’s impossible for this type of movie to entirely avoid that fate (unless reality intrudes on the project in unexpected ways, as in Metallica: Some Kind of Monster). But there’s also too much play and invention here for the film to be dismissed as just another glorified DVD extra. Certainly for any fan of Cave’s, 20,000 Days on Earth makes for a creative, enthralling journey through the man’s world.

It’s not a biography nor is it anything like a standard music documentary – indeed, I’m not sure it can be considered a documentary at all, at least not all the way through. But “20,000 Days” offers an exceptionally intimate portrait of an artist who has sometimes sought to resist explication.

Nick Cave's talent is matched by his extraordinary, navel-gazing solipsism. He is as fascinated by himself as film-makers Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard are by him. This is a quirky, intimate look at his creative processes.