20,000 Days On Earth, film review: Quirky, intimate look at Nick Cave's creative processes

(15) Iain Forsyth & Jane Pollard, 97 mins

Can’t get you out of my car: Nick Cave drives Kylie Minogue in Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard’s ‘20,000 Days on Earth’

Nick Cave's talent is matched by his extraordinary, navel-gazing solipsism. He is as fascinated by himself as film-makers Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard are by him.

This is a quirky, intimate look at his creative processes. He lives what seems to be a comfortable, bourgeois life by the seaside in Brighton but manages to make his everyday existence seem as dramatic as an episode in a Southern Gothic novel. He cannibalises his own life in his songs.

Forsyth and Pollard's approach is reverential rather than critical but the film is beautifully shot and its impressionistic approach is a welcome antidote to that of most rock docs.

For all the darkness in his music and writing, Cage is a personable presence who, in dream-like sequences, we see chatting away, cabbie-style, with friends and collaborators (Ray Winstone, Kylie Minogue) as he drives them in his car.