One More Time With Feeling

by Felix 15 September 2016

This documentary by Andrew Dominik (director of The Assassination of Jesse James, for which Cave and Ellis also wrote the music) captures the recording of Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds’ sixteenth studio album Skeleton Tree. Overshadowing the entire process is the death of Nick Cave’s teenage son last year, which occurred as the recording was happening; it’s impossible to detect the shift – many of the songs were written before the incident, and yet themes of loss and desperation are everywhere.

Andrew Dominik’s direction is a supplement to Cave’s own song writing and performance. The atmospherics of the recording spaces, the very stark rendering of faces in monochrome; all songs on the album are performed live in the film with cameras circling the piano and getting into Warren Ellis’s violin strings. There is a beautiful moment when the 3D camera sort of removes itself from the studio, backs away into the woodwork and then out into the hallway, spiralling down a stair bannister, in time with the swirl of the music. There are shots of Cave getting ready in the dressing room with a commentary over the top of what he was thinking at the time.

You start to wonder, particularly as the film reaches its conclusion, whether Cave seriously wanted this film to be released, whether he wanted to talk about anything at all. There are scenes where he seems to resent the cameras being there. The “bullshit” (his word) with which Cave answers Dominik’s interview-style questions reveals a self-awareness and an unwillingness to speak honestly. His wife Susie appears briefly, and there is a scene where they bring out a framed picture painted by their son and afterwards Cave eyes the camera, as if to say ‘why are you filming this?’ And that question lingers throughout the documentary: why present the private in such a public way? The film gives more of an insight into the creative process in the face of loss, but art in this instance is not a solution to trauma, its healing powers are not so apparent. It would be easy to imagine Cave emerging from the experience a changed man, but Once More With Feeling proves that it’s not so simple as that.