‘20,000 Days on Earth’ presents itself as a documentary about the enigmatic Nick Cave, with a voiceover by Nick Cave. But Peter Roche believes it’s about much more than Nick Cave.

Director: Iain Forsyth, Jane Pollard
Actors: Nick Cave, Susie Bick, Iain Forsyth
Genre: Documentary, Drama
Cert: 15A
Runtime: 97 mins
Release Date: September 19 2014

20,000 Days on Earth is a film with a singular and original vision. Rather than be an informative documentary on an influential rock star, it is a thoughtful meditation on the creative process propelled along by an exquisite screenplay and an irresistible sense of time.

For over 30 years Nick Cave has been carving a name out for himself as the enigmatic frontman of The Birthday Party, Grinderman, and most famously The Bad Seeds. He has also worked to considerable acclaim as an actor, author and screenwriter. The variety of his work and general sense of mystery about his personal life begs for a documentary, however 20,000 Days is not about to elucidate this compelling artist. Cave once said: “the loss of my father created in my life a vacuum, a space in which my words began to float and collect and find their purpose”, and this film also adopts a similarly free form in order to allow ideas and feelings to be unhindered by narrative or reality.

The film starts as Cave awakes beside his wife, the former Vivienne Westwood model, Susie Cave. He looks at himself in the mirror and a voiceover tells us that the nature of his work as a songwriter necessitates that he cannibalises all of those precious, sacred, moments between a husband and wife. That he chews up those fleeting moments and spits them out in the form of a song.

This is a poignant introduction to Cave’s style of tenderly brutal song writing. We are treated to a view of his office (if an artist such as himself can have a workspace as conventional as an office), the walls of which are covered in posters from spaghetti westerns and 1950’s pin-ups, and in the centre sits a desk with a sole typewriter.

As Cave drives from appointment to appointment, he’s visited by pseudo imaginary guests, including Kylie Minogue (who collaborated on the infamous ‘Where the Wild Roses Grow’ – The Bad Seeds’ bestselling song), who each bring out a different element of his character. There is a healthy dose of humour amid the nihilistic musings – Warren Ellis, who could be described as the co-star, is a talented storyteller and the whole cinema was in stitches at his story about Nina Simone.

The greatest strength of 20,000 Days is how it paints a portrait of an artist at the height of his artistic powers, without really being about him at all. Rather than be the subject matter, Cave’s role is as a narrator. His lyrical dialogue encourages us to see the whole in the singular – as he stands on a Brighton pier in driving rain and wind, he conjures a collective feeling of standing alone on an inhospitable rock, spinning wildly as it hurtles through space.

Directors Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard set out to make the film with the intention of leaving its audience with the desire to create and engage, to wholly be. If they succeed or not probably depends on whether you are willing to be carried along; whether you will join the cult of Cave or not. I, for one, am a believer.

20,000 Days On Earth is out in cinemas now.