A gripping portrait of Nick Cave that simultaneously mythologises and debunks its subject matter...

| Original Score: 4.5/5 | Apr 22, 2021

The performances and behind-the-scenes practices are rocking and revealing. Conversations are generous and surprising; Cave's monologuing inspiring, a celebration of a creativity and action.

| Feb 1, 2020

20,000 Days on Earth is best in the moments where we see Cave interact with others.

| Original Score: 3.8/5 | Nov 27, 2019

We're carried through in impressionistic fashion, sound and vision beautifully in sync with stirring images of the Brighton landscape where Cave lives and gig footage that betters any recent concert movie.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 3, 2019

The film ultimately uncannily honours the ethos of Cave the musician, as it in a sense - like him - enjoys mythologising storytelling and the creative process.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Dec 2, 2018

There's an ambition to Forsyth and Pollard's work that's hard to deny, as well as a refreshingly quixotic commitment to tweaking the generic conventions of the promotional piece they're making.

| Nov 13, 2017

The structure of Cave's day feels contrived at times, and there are moments when his ramblings cross the line into self-indulgence, but for the most part this is an intimate, warm film that genuinely gets into the head and heart of a dark, brooding soul.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Sep 7, 2017

[The directors] give us a filmed curio cabinet of relics and recollections akin to the video for Johnny Cash's cover of "Hurt" if he had given us a tour while singing.

| Original Score: B+ | Feb 27, 2016

"Something happens onstage," Cave says, "where you forget who you are and become someone else." As much as any documentary can, 20,000 Days on Earth allows us to bear witness to what goes on in that process.

| Jan 5, 2015

The film has a cinematic ambition to which it admirably lives up, not only in its bold structure and impressively moody cinematography, production, editing and sound design, but also in its plethora of imaginative and unconventional touches.

| Original Score: 4.5/5 | Jan 5, 2015

Nick Cave says he isn't interested in things that he understands. Yet this distillation of the man himself -- reflective and sensitive, and inventive -- tells you much about an artist's understanding of his art.

| Jan 5, 2015

If you're not already a fan of Australian-born rocker Nick Cave, the hyper-stylized documentary 20,000 Days on Earth will make you one -- and increase your knowledge of and appreciation for the artistic process at work.

| Jan 5, 2015

The title refers to the fact that the day chronicled is ostensibly Cave's 20,000th alive, though the movie is so slowly paced that 20,000 days seems more like the running time.

| Jan 5, 2015

Near the end of the movie, Cave talks about living in the 'shimmering space' where imagination and reality intersect. He's talking about words and music, but he could be talking about 20,000 Days on Earth.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jan 5, 2015

It's unlikely to appeal beyond Cave's core fan base -- but they are sure to love its sheer eccentricity.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jan 5, 2015

Like his live performances and recorded works, the tortured dark figure and the aesthetics of the film bring together an intriguing three-dimensional mythological scrapbook.

| Original Score: 4.5/5 | Jan 5, 2015

Forsyth and Pollard are visual artists-turned-filmmakers and their fine feel for the romantic possibilities of lighting and composition shape every frame. They're less sensitive to the line that separates drama from pretentiousness.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jan 5, 2015

An intelligent and revealing look at one of rock's last true iconoclasts.

| Original Score: A- | Jan 5, 2015

At this movie's dark heart is the disarming self-awareness and intelligence with which Cave cops to raiding, mythologizing, and cannibalizing his memories, be they exquisite or banal.

| Jan 5, 2015

I'm not sure whether 20,000 Days On Earth is a documentary, an essay film or a work of complete fiction. I do know I enjoyed it, so it doesn't really matter.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Jan 5, 2015