All the interesting thoughts and ideas in this movie, are expressed in less than 15 minutes. All the other "air time" is filled with (as it seemed to me) unedited, sort of "raw" interviews, concert videos, and song writing process, in addition most of these are boring and filled with hubris and self-glorification. I new next to none about Nick Cave before watching this movie, after watching it - my curiosity dropped below zero.

I've been a huge fan of Nick Cave since 1994 when he and The Bad Seeds released their album 'Let Love In'. And over the past twenty years, I have purchased his music on vinyl, CD, and digitally. Nick Cave is not only one of the coolest people on the planet and a legendary musician and singer, but he is also a filmmaker who often collaborates with the amazing Warren Ellis.For those of you who are unfamiliar with Nick Cave, he looks like what Spock would look like if he went goth in the Wild West and had feelings. You might have heard a song of his in a variety of horror films called 'Red Right Hand', which was featured in the hit Wes Craven movie 'Scream'. And I was upset I missed his amazing show from his recent album 'Push The Sky Away' when it came to Dallas, but a friend and fellow writer went to the show, got first row, and shot a a few clips for the site, which you can see HERE (Amazing, right?).But when I realized Drafthouse Films was releasing a documentary about Cave, I thought I had just won the lottery, because it's not every day where we get an in depth look at the man behind the music. But like all of Cave's work, this is not your standard format documentary. It's an acid trip and fantasy ride through a patch in Cave's mysterious life. The Australian rock legend's fan base has multiplied over the years and he still has one of the biggest cult followings ever in the music industry. This new film called '20,000 Days on Earth' is a breath of fresh air in the documentary world, as Nick Cave plays a very real version of himself as his surroundings coax information out of him.The film opens up with a montage of dozens of screens, displaying things from history, which segues into clips of Cave (similar to how Michael Jackson started his last concert tour), and has Cave waking up in his bed next to his wife, narrating that he is an alien and has been on Earth for 19,999 days. He then goes to the window and opens the curtain to reveal a bright never ending light, which is similar to the cover of 'Push The Sky Away'. And it only gets better from there. Instead of having talking head interviews with Cave, his bandmates, and friends and family, we take a journey with cave as he drives his luxury car and is visited by hallucinations, friendly encounters, poems, and even a fictional therapist played by Darian Leader who has Cave talk about his childhood and career.It's quite brilliant really, but you can't expect anything less than brilliant from Nick Cave. The film is constructed in such a way, that you feel like you received all the information you ever wanted to know about Cave himself, but are also treated to one of the most stylish films to come out this year. And don't worry, you'll get a healthy does of Cave playing instruments, singing, and even a few songs from a live performance where he sings his version of Stagger Lee. It was epic. One of the funniest parts was where Cave was writing and playing the piano, coming up with sounds and lyrics that was eerily similar to a famous Lionel Richie tune. It was quite humorous.Whether you are a Nick Cave fan or not, this film delivers the goods on every level both stylistically and story-wise. And it once again proves that Nick Cave is still a creative genius, mad scientist, and one hell of a musician.

"Who knows their own story? Certainly, it makes no sense when we live in the midst of it. It's all just clamour and confusion. It only becomes a story when we tell it and retell it. Our small precious recollections that we speak again and again to ourselves or to others. First creating the narrative of our lives and then keeping the story from dissolving into darkness." Occupying a gray zone between documentary and autobiographical fiction film '20,000 Days on Earth' opens with a counter that, you guessed it, starts at zero and rapidly counts up to 20,000 in a mere 1 1/2 minutes all the while on a couple of screens we see Nick Cave in various stages of his life as well as TV footage that corresponds with the number of days (e.g. a boy smoking pot around day 5,000) or people that apparently were of significance to him around that particular time (so in the early days we for example see Johnny Cash, Elvis and of course Barbara Eden). It's a loud and chaotic montage that simultaneously serves as the opening credits. The first scene stands in stark contrast to it, through the storm of the past we have arrived in the present day. We see an alarm clock without a seconds hand giving the impression of time virtually standing still. Nick Cave lies in bed staring at his clock before it starts to ring to officially herald the start of day 20,000.The film that follows feels thorough, self-contained and complete.Thorough because it keeps returning to the same memories. First Nick Cave has a session with his psychoanalyst which feels as much like an interview with a journalist as it does like a couch session, for there is no couch but the "interviewer" asks more psychoanalyst type of questions that very often go back to Cave's childhood days. Questions like: "What's your earliest memory of a female body?" or "What's your earliest memory of your father?", each question being answered with a story. Later Cave exchanges memories about the Nina Simone concert that he earlier talked about to his psychiatrist with a colleague who was at the concert as well which of course transforms the same story, it becomes fuller, the atmosphere surrounding it changes, etc. Or at another point Nick Cave goes to the Nick Cave archive because of course when you are somebody like Nick Cave you don't keep your old junk in boxes, you get other people to do that for you...anyway. Objects from the stories he told his psycho-guy pop up again or rather he asks for them, like the copy of "Lo-li-ta" from which his father read to him one day and that made little Nick see a side of his father that he hadn't known before. Or a picture of Susie, who became his wife, which leads into a dazzling multimedia collage of sight, sound and spoken word about Nick Cave's erotic fantasies that climaxes where all good erotic fantasies climax, with Jackie Kennedy at JFK's funeral. Songs come back also, he writes a song, practices a song, records a song, records a background track with a children's choir, and finally performs it in the Sydney Opera House in front of a big audience.Self-contained it feels because there is a clear core theme which always is a challenge in an (auto)biographical film, because how can a human life be summed up to one idea? Here that idea is that Nick Cave basically lives as a vessel for his memories, to acquire them, to put them into a narrative in order not to forget them, and to use them to create songs. His greatest fear, he says, is losing his memory. "...in some way that's really what the process of songwriting is for me. It's the retelling of these stories and the mythologizing of these stories." The people in those stories become mere figures, figures that he, as he puts it, cannibalizes for his creations.Unsurprisingly, Cave in the film comes across as self-absorbed and to call the product navel-gazing I think would be a pretty fair assessment. For the sake of context it bears reminding that this film doesn't show much of Nick Cave the private person and instead is much more about Nick Cave the musician and the public person. No doubt his profession is what enables and I think at least to an extent also excuses his constant self-examination, after all he made a successful career out of it.And finally, complete it feels because the ending, a live-performance of a song we have seen and heard played several times throughout, is aided by footage of old live performances from the band history that often show him making the same movements on stage, reminding not only of the start of the film, but also that this performance that currently is the unfathomable now, will soon become a part of this man's memory turned life narrative. Put on film it shows one version of the event as it happened, something that will help Nick Cave keep the story from dissolving into darkness. But it also doesn't need a Nick Cave anymore to write a song about it, as a film it already is a mythologized narrative and it exists independent of any self-absorbed musicians that may happen to be the subject of '20,000 Days on Earth'.

I know a few women who profess to like Nick Cave. I know no men who do. Maybe that's because on this evidence Nick is a bit of a Mummy's boy. He's also been a junkie and a university lecturer so obviously he KNOWS A LOT OF STUFF, and we mere mortals should listen because he HAS THE ELIXIR, IE he's read The Hero's Journey.Can't sing. Can't write anything meaningful. Plays the piano clumsily. He talks to his therapist, who asks, 'What is your first memory of the female body?' Nick proceeds to talk about when he was fifteen and didn't have sex. This is the man who remembers a 'happy childhood', but he has no memory of his mother's body - or any aunt - or any primary school classmate, sister or grandmother. That's why women like him; he really does miss his Mum and he's lonely.But beware - he draws lots of pictures of naked women. In between pretending to drive cars, writing terrible poetry and talking about himself to a coterie of employees, over and over and over and over and over and over again.I used to not really care about Nick Cave. Now I loathe him.