"Nick Cave invited filmmaker Andrew Dominik to direct this documentary about the making of his band’s new album, ‘Skeleton Tree’. It’s partly an artful and tenderly crafted showcase for the new music as we watch the Bad Seeds perform seven songs in a studio. But it’s really about something much bigger – something much more difficult, dark and unknowable.
"Cave wrote the songs on the album in the wake of the death in July 2015 of his 15-year-old son Arthur, who fell from a cliff in a tragic accident near the family’s Brighton home. The film is dedicated to Arthur, and Cave and his wife, Susie Bick, discuss how their lives and work continue to be changed beyond comprehension by the tragedy. ‘It’s affected me in ways I don’t understand,’ says Cave, still raw with grief. ‘You have to renegotiate your position in the world.’
"It’s a deeply personal film. Dominik makes the wise decision to embrace how impossible it is to get to grips fully with someone else’s painful inner life. He does this largely by putting a ‘making of’ feel front and centre, so that everything here feels fleeting, not written in stone. This layering is one of the film’s great strengths. It feels very honest.
"The music, of course, is also the film’s subject, and we listen to a series of moving songs, each of them served excellently by Dominik’s inventive, moody, sometimes playful photography. But it’s the conversation that hits home. What Dominik gives us is a portrait of an artist and a man and a family at a low. He doesn’t try to understand, but he does find some beauty and truth among the chaos and despair." - Uncut
Part of our on-going Rock in Cinema series