20,000 Days on Earth

20,000 – that’s how many days on Earth Nick Cave spent when he began recording his latest record, Push The Sky Away. Viewers get to spend one day with him, from when he awakes through a night walk on the beach. The atmospheric and poetic documentary from a duo of British visual artists adroitly blends concrete facts with rock myth and private life with stage persona of the legendary musician. The "24 hours" formula includes scenes written by the directors with lines improvised by Cave. The musician meets his psychoanalyst, hired to solve the white spots of childhood. A wild youth is literally pulled out of the box by an archivist researching the story of the Birthday Party, Cave’s former band. At night, Kylie Minogue and Blixa Bargeld materialize in his car like banshees, whose conversation seems to seep into hallucination rather than interview. This stylized oneiric film seems to be created by Cave, because, as he says during the film, “as opposed to an actor, a rock star never takes his mask off.”

Ewa Szabłowska