‘This Much I Know to Be True’: Film Review | Berlin 2022

If you’ve spent any time during COVID lockdown missing the communal exhilaration of live music, you could do a lot worse than Andrew Dominik’s latest lovingly crafted Nick Cave studio session/performance film, This Much I Know to Be True. The documentary follows 2016’s One More Time With Feeling, in which the director chronicled the recording of Cave & The Bad Seeds’ haunting album Skeleton Tree, written during a period of intense grief following the tragic loss of the singer’s son. The new film focuses on tracks from the subsequent albums Ghosteen and Carnage, and despite those lugubrious titles, the work evokes as much hope as darkness.

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Perhaps more than anything, the doc celebrates the remarkable creative union between Cave and his chief collaborator and bandmate Warren Ellis. The two middle-aged men — now respectively 64 and 56 — make compelling figures in performance, with Cave the shamanistic rocker conveying transported intensity either at the grand piano or behind a mic stand, and Ellis the spectacularly bearded wild-man multi-instrumentalist, looking like he’s wandered in from the remote hills, his spindly body making skittering musical shapes as he dances, plays fiddle or conducts.

Unlike many other famed musicians whose careers span decades, their sound has continued to evolve. Ellis’ dense synth loops are more free-flowing than ever, creating a mesmerizing effect with the poetic abstraction and crazed mantras of Cave’s lyrics. The latter often is as much a spoken-word artist as a singer.

Their work is captured by gifted Irish cinematographer Robbie Ryan, no less, seen frequently riding the camera truck on a circular track that surrounds Cave and the musicians on the stage of a large converted-warehouse studio, an approach also used in the 3D One More Time With Feeling. The visuals are further enhanced by knockout, extremely varied concert-style lighting designed by Dominik and Chris Scott, making the film a wraparound experience.

In the first of a handful of informal interview interludes that kicks things off, Cave explains amusingly that he followed British government advice about retraining in a new profession, given that it was no longer viable during COVID to make a living as a touring musician. He chose to become a ceramicist, using traditional Staffordshire porcelain as his inspiration for a series he calls “The Story of the Devil in 18 Figurines.” Wearing a white lab coat in his workshop, he talks us through each piece of that project, which progresses from birth through death and forgiveness in the afterlife.

The doc then shifts without ceremony into performance mode as Cave sings “Spinning Song” and Ryan’s camera responds accordingly, while the sound becomes almost celestial and the images are suffused in cleansing white light. The tracks performed touch on such themes as faith, love, loss, and a longing for peace or deliverance, for change and renewal. While some of the lyrics dip into Biblical imagery, it’s the more enigmatic, transcendently spiritual nature of the words that feeds their power.

It’s no doubt significant to this recent output that Cave at one point explains how in the past he would habitually describe himself as a musician and a writer, but now he prefers not to be defined by his occupation. He thinks of himself as a husband, father and citizen who writes stuff, rather than the other way around. There’s personal insight also in his responses to “The Red Hand Files,” an unmoderated online forum he started in which he invites subscribers to ask him anything. Sampling from the 38,065 questions posted at the time the film was made, he considers thoughts on grief, despair, chaos and calamity from admirers who clearly find communion in his music.

Which is what this film is all about. Among the highlights are the enigmatic vision of “Hollywood,” the thrilling orchestral surge of “Ghosteen,” the stirring incantation of “Hand of God,” the comparatively simple beauty of “Albuquerque” and the violent, apocalyptic exultations of “White Elephant,” which evolve into a soaring chorus that carries a faint hope of redemption. In one touching interlude, the divine Marianne Faithfull drops by to deliver a “Prayer Before Work,” looking physically shaky but still in full possession of her cool command and dry humor.

Dominik’s association with Cave presumably goes back to his first feature, Chopper, which was scored by Mick Harvey, co-founder of Cave bands The Birthday Party and The Bad Seeds. Then Cave and Ellis composed the score for 2007’s artful revisionist Western, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford.

Signs of friendship between the director and the musicians are evident in casual comments overheard or glimpses of Dominik interacting with them. But more than that, it’s his obvious respect for them as artists that makes both of his Cave music docs so satisfying — beguiling in their sound, of course, but no less so in their breathtaking visuals and their rivetingly intimate personal access. As fans of Dominik wait for his long-gestating Marilyn Monroe bio-drama Blonde, finally due this year from Netflix, This Much I Know to Be True also serves as a welcome reminder of his stylish craftsmanship.