There is a scene in the new documentary about Nick Cave that neatly sums up the artist's outlook on life.
Prevented from touring while in lockdown in Brighton, England, Cave embraced a new-found pastime after the British government obtusely pushed artists to retrain.
"I took the government's advice. I've retrained as a ceramicist, because it's no longer viable to be a touring artist," Cave quips to camera.
Cut to the musician, author, occasional actor and now-ceramicist's studio, featuring his latest creation: a series of figures suitably dark and foreboding, which he christened The Life of the Devil.
Cutting humour aside, the man we see in Andrew Dominik's new film, This Much I Know to Be True, is a radically different beast to the tortured soul of One More Time with Feeling – the director's haunting 2016 document of Cave trying to navigate his way through immense grief in the wake of his son Arthur's sudden, shocking death.
Insisting on completing a then-new album with his band of nearly 40 years, the Bad Seeds, Cave seemed like an artist hanging by a thread.
Although Dominik's direction in 2022 isn't radically different – both films were shot in the round with a circular dolly track following the musicians as they perform – this new documentary is awash with colour (rather than its predecessor's stark black and white palette). It is often joyous, laced with wit.
Only one figure from the Bad Seeds, Warren Ellis, is present, together with an array of supporting figures, the most notable of which is a brief appearance from guest performer Marianne Faithfull.
This Much I Know to Be True showcases Cave's most recent music (2019 Bad Seeds record Ghosteen and Cave and Ellis's 2021 album Carnage), which is carefully rehearsed, performed and expounded upon in the film. The concert-without-an-audience is presented in a bespoke, cinematic setting – a deserted performance space in Battersea in south London – with 7.1 surround sound.
The cumulative effect is breathtaking, with a stripped-down sense of purpose that belies a quietly assured and apt grandiosity.
"So when they were due to go out on tour, I said, 'Let's shoot a live show. Get the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, lots of screens.' They were going to have 12 backup singers."
That tour was cancelled — no guesses why.
"And then Nick just asked me [to film]. He just needed to do something during the pandemic, basically. That was the sort of impetus – the main motive, really."
The tour that Cave and Ellis conceived last year did eventually appear, albeit in a somewhat scaled-down form, playing to rave notices across Europe and the US – and soon, Australia – making Dominik's film timelier than he may have foreseen.
Not that any of the key players have had much time to pause between gigs. Dominik's next dramatic film, the much-anticipated Netflix biopic Blonde, which stars Cuban actor Ana de Armas as screen goddess Marilyn Monroe, is also due to finally appear later in the year, with an original score by Cave and Ellis.
What makes the pair's working relationship so unique? Each has a vastly different approach, Dominik says. Cave's precision is matched by Ellis's seemingly random, endless, stream-of-consciousness output. Together, it works remarkably well.
"It's a lot about Nick trying to get Warren's attention. That's what Nick describes it as," Dominik says.
"Warren's very good with Nick. I don't know if Warren makes music every day, but he makes so much [of it]. And he just keeps going, you know. It really forces you to be there in a way where you get lost in it."
Dominik's working relationship with the pair dates back to his 2007 revisionist western The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (a three-hour director's cut of which is also expected to emerge at some point). By then, Cave and Ellis had expanded their repertoire to become full-blown film composers for hire, and Dominik has evidently grown closer to them both in the years since, particularly in the wake of the tumultuous events of the last seven years.
The Cave he now knows is drastically different from the man he met in the late 80s when they were both part of the Melbourne arts scene.
"It was around [the Bad Seeds' album] Tender Prey [in 1988]. I walk in and the Prince of Darkness was sitting on the couch, watching a documentary about earthworms. And I ask him, 'What are you watching?' And he just turned around and bared his teeth at me, with his wild hair and crazy eyes, and growled. He's changed incredibly, from the guy on the couch to who he is today."
Cave has also moved on considerably from their last documentary encounter in 2016 – something Dominik wanted to capture on film. Looking remarkably well-preserved, Cave is more holistic about his place in the world.
"He's the only person who's had a career like this, right?" Dominik muses.
"I think he's got a lot of good attitudes about stuff. He's honest and he's always changing. I'm sure he goes through periods when he gets a bit calcified or something, but something will happen to move him out of it. He always seems to be evolving. And everything he says is incredibly sane. Like, really sane."
This Much I Know to Be True is in cinemas from May 11.
