20,000 Days on Earth (Directed by Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard, 2014)

Note: this is the first of my NZ Film Festival posts. I expect I will finish these reviews sometime before 2025.

There are few artists that trade on mythology quite like Nick Cave. In a career stretching back to the late 1970's, Cave always tackled the big subjects- death, love, God and violence. His music and writing has drawn from the blues, frantic postpunk energy, murder ballads, Scott Walker, Greek Mythology and, of course, Elvis. My interest in him has grown over the years as he has matured into that rare artist who mixes rock and roll id with a gift for storytelling with idiosyncratic detail and power.

20,000 Days on Earth plays around with Cave's own mythology. On the one hand, there is nothing so demystifying as a middle aged rock star being interviewed in a film about their life and career. It is probably the death of a certain kind of mystery to actually get to know artists, or anybody, on a human level. We see Cave pottering about his Brighton home, pondering the weather, running errands and visiting with old friends. We hear him talk about his father, his childhood and his various muses.

At the same time, Cave's presence is still undeniably mesmerizing. When we see Nick and his newly reformed band, The Bad Seeds, run through a new song in the studio all thoughts of the commonplace and ordinary, or even of the typical music documentary fade away. They seem to be tapping into some communal force that elevates and transforms the skeleton of a song into something that moves and is alive. Before an audience, Cave, himself, is transformed. In the film, Kylie Minogue, his one-time duet partner, described him on the stage as a sort of magnificent tree looming over everyone. I like the imagery of that and it really fits Cave.

What makes this film interesting is that the film is using all of these stories and the odd performance piece to help us understand how Cave works and where it all comes from. It's not just some narrative of past glories. We never get a linear rundown of the key moments in his life and career, or whatever. Instead, 20,000 Days on Earth uses Cave's memories and journal entries to illustrate not only his creative process, but also how he looks at life and art. Cave keeps coming back to the transformative power of art and we actually see this process before our eyes and ears. The film often has some beautifully cinematic moments and none more so than the final image of Cave standing resolutely at the water's edge of Brighton at night as the camera zooms out to the stormy sea. This is an excellent documentary.

Robert Altman's A Wedding

A Wedding (Directed by Robert Altman, 1978)

Dr. Jules Meecham: [looking at the guests] Jesus, it's like the last ten days of Hitler!

In whatever era this is, it seems that everything cool is co-opted, packaged and sold back to us eventually. We see this in culture and politics all of the time.What was once shocking becomes mainstream. Confrontational people and ideas are transformed into comfortable reminders of how courageous, outré or exciting we once were...and could be again if you act now! Anything messy, or inconvenient is discarded. 

While I yell at the neighbourhood children for trespassing on my property, let me acknowledge that this is not even a particularly original, or curmudgeonly observation. If you are over a certain age you recognize this pattern. There are some people who are more difficult to re-package for Generation Zygote, however. Robert Altman is one of those people.

Altman's films like Mash, Nashville, The Player and Short Cuts were funny, messy, shocking and often anarchic takes on American society. It has been said that Altman was less about style and more about attitude. I am still trying to figure out what that attitude was- it's not merely "fuck you." There is something else running through his work that evades the easy maverick caricature of his reputation.

Altman probably existed at just the right time for a film-maker of his stripe. There was a brief period in Hollywood between the collapse of the studio system and the rise of our global media conglomerate overlords where strong-willed film-makers had more sway. He was certainly iconoclastic, but it probably limited his career. Altman kicked against the pricks over and over and over again. 

With many of these works in mind, I finally got around to seeing one of his more overlooked films, A Wedding (1978).  The film is about an enormous society wedding where everything goes wrong- from the minister blowing his lines at the ceremony to outbreaks of affairs, decades-old recrimination re-surfacing, drunken lunacy and even death.

Of course, the mishaps of the weekend uncovered deeper problems. The Corelli family represents Chicago's Old Money society, Old Money snobbery and possibly Old World connections of dubious merit. The nouveau riche Brenner clan have their own issues. Even the bride and groom have a few rather significant skeletons in their matrimonial closet. 

 Certainly, the institution of marriage is not treated with a lot of reverence in A Wedding. There is an interesting element of social class criticism here, as well, but the story and format is a bit glib to make any salient points.With nearly 50 characters the narrative often gets a little convoluted. Three decades on, a lot of the social commentary also feels somewhat dated and obvious. Yes, sure, upper middle class Americans are hypocritical, loud and tacky. Tell me something I don't know (and live).

Still, anything with the great Paul Dooley, Pat McCormick and Carol Burnett is going to work as a comedy even if everything else does not quite add up. You must also credit Altman for giving his actors (his many, many actors) the freedom to develop and improvise their characters. There are moments of spontaneity that rank with the best of his films.

I guess Altman's acceptance of chaos is what most stands out to me.  I am not sure his working method has been duplicated by many other important directors. His anti-authoritarian streak would seem to extend to himself as he often ceded control as director and worked a lot more collaboratively than many other acclaimed film-makers. 

Altman's films may sometimes go for low-hanging fruit, or exhibit a cruel streak in him, but there is nothing antiseptic, or packaged about his work. A Wedding may have a lot of the same elements as other Altman films, but it had little in common with anything else. It's worth a look if you can find it.