20,000 Days on Earth

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.

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.

Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard’s innovative, powerful and insightful Nick Cave bio 20,000 Days on Earth took us into a towering inner world of visionary invention. The Australian musician’s wry wit kept the film from ever over-aggrandising its subject, while the most powerful sequences showed him in conversation with a bona-fide Freudian analyst about his early memories and self-transformation through stage performance.