Quartile rating: 7/10 · 1 rating
A semi-fictionalized documentary about a day in the life of Australian musician Nick Cave's persona.
20,000 Days on Earth is a genuinely singular piece of filmmaking — part documentary, part fictional construct, part therapy session — that refuses easy categorisation. Directors Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard create a visually inventive, deeply atmospheric portrait of Nick Cave that feels as much like an art installation as a music documentary. Cave himself is a mesmerising on-screen presence, performing 'himself' with full self-awareness and wit. The cinematography is consistently striking, using Cave's Brighton surroundings and archive footage with great compositional flair. The 'plot' (such as it is) is deliberately loose and associative rather than conventionally structured, which is thematically appropriate but means narrative momentum is minimal. The ending, while tonally satisfying, doesn't land with the weight its ambitions suggest. Novelty is sky-high — there really is nothing else quite like this film.