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20,000 Days on Earth
20,000 Days on Earth‘s opening runs through Nick Cave’s life to date, arrayed in stills and clips over a Nam June Paik-ish wall of TVs: as a boy, Birthday Party and Bad Seeds performer, etc., the music building to apocalyptic release. Then it’s an early morning rise for a sedate-seeming Cave. “At the end of the 20th century, I ceased to be a human being,” he announces in factual rather than aggressive voice-over. “This is not necessarily a bad thing.” With that, Cave goes about his day, driving through the not-so-jolly little seaside town of Brighton (it’s nearly always raining) from the studio to longtime collaborator Warren Ellis’ house for a home-cooked lunch and memories of a Nina Simone show, to the (non-existant) Nick Cave archives to tell the stories behind old stills, et al. (Vadim Rizov)
