Something to watch tonight: Thursday 7 December

This Much I Know to Be True (Dominik, 2022)

Nick Cave and Seán O’Hagan’s book of con­ver­sa­tions, Faith, Hope & Carnage, is the best book I’ve read this year. I even quoted from it on the radio last night while I was review­ing Loach’s The Old Oak.

So, today’s recom­mend­a­tion is the most recent col­lab­or­a­tion between Cave and film­maker Andrew Dominik, a doc­u­ment­ary show­cas­ing songs from the albums Ghosteen and Carnage and also the rela­tion­ship between Cave and his chief music­al col­lab­or­at­or Warren Ellis.

I reviewed it – along with the redis­covered 1988 per­form­ance film Songs for Drella fea­tur­ing Lou Reed and John Cale cel­eb­rat­ing the life of their great friend Andy Warhol – for At the Movies last year:

Anyone who has seen earli­er films about Cave, espe­cially 20,000 DAYS ON EARTH from 2014, will know that you can’t always take what he says about him­self at face value but as he’s become older – and the vicis­situdes of life have taken their toll – he’s become a much less opaque character.

Here he is talk­ing about his web­site, the Red Hand Files, where fans get to ask him ques­tions about life and art and oth­er things. There are over 36,000 ques­tions on the site, evid­ently, and it would not be pos­sible to answer every single one but the ques­tions that do get Cave’s atten­tion get his FULL attention.

[CLIP: Red Hand Files]

THIS MUCH I KNOW TO BE TRUE is mostly music – new music – with his reg­u­lar col­lab­or­at­or these days, the hil­ari­ous Warren Ellis. The film does make a strong case for Ellis to be giv­en his own documentary.

The songs are filmed in an aban­doned fact­ory in Bristol, appar­ently, but it does look like a space that is excep­tion­ally well equipped for per­form­ance and film­mak­ing. Some of the sings are acous­tic and semi-improvised and some slowly add band mem­bers (includ­ing a cameo from a Covid-affected Marianne Faithful) but all of the songs are beau­ti­fully pho­to­graphed by the great Robbie Ryan.

That’s a cut and paste from the script but it’s bet­ter when you listen to it!

Where to find This Much I Know to Be True

Aotearoa: Streaming on Mubi

Australia, USA & UK: Streaming on Mubi and also a digit­al rental

Further listening

It’s been a big week what with filling in on At the Movies yes­ter­day (The Old Oak, Godzilla Minus One, Trolls Band Together and a cameo appear­ance from Renaissance: A Film by Beyoncé) and being called up to com­ment on the state of stream­ing ser­vices in New Zealand after the announce­ment that Neon was put­ting up their prices and pla­cing ads next to their premi­um content.

On Saturday my selec­tions for “Twelve Films for Christmas” will be pos­ted to the RNZ web­site and Morning Report have asked me to go in and chat about them tomor­row morn­ing at about 8.25 (TBC).