Film

20,000 Days on Earth

Not a music doc so much as a portrait of a man performing himself. Nick Cave narrates an invented 20,000th day, half-confessing to a therapist, half-driving ghosts of his past around in a car, stopping to record with Warren Ellis. It's moody, funny in a dry way, and more interested in how myths get built than in greatest hits.

TMDb rating7.0

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I'm Not There2007

Six actors play fragments of Bob Dylan, none of them quite him, which is exactly the move Cave pulls on himself here — the idea that a public self is a performance you can split apart.

But Deliberately fractured and non-linear; if you want a clean narrative about Dylan's life, this refuses to give you one.

I'm Not There poster

Shut Up and Play the Hits2012no page yet

James Murphy talking through retirement over coffee, intercut with LCD Soundsystem's last show — same blend of intimate confession and staged performance, same melancholy about growing older in public.

But The emotional register stays fairly even throughout; it doesn't reach for Cave's stranger, more theatrical touches.

Stop Making Sense1984

Jonathan Demme and David Byrne turn a concert film into pure choreography and mounting strangeness — proof that a performance doc can be an art object, not just a record of a gig.

But There's no interview, no biography, no framing device — just the show, which is thrilling but a very different animal.

Stop Making Sense poster

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

F for Fake1973

Decades before Cave staged his own myth-making for a camera, Welles did the same thing to himself — blurring documentary and fiction to ask what a public self is actually made of.

Orson Welles' essay-film about art forgers, storytelling and his own reputation as a fabulist — a gleeful, brilliant ancestor to the idea that a documentary can lie its way to a truth.

But It's playful to the point of being slippery; some viewers find its constant trickery exhausting rather than delightful.

F for Fake poster
More like this (8)

Cobain: Montage of Heck2015

Kurt Cobain's home movies, animation and diary pages assembled into something that feels less like reportage and more like being inside someone's head.

But It's rawer and sadder than Cave's film, with none of the wry self-awareness — this one doesn't blink.

Cobain: Montage of Heck poster

Amy2015

Assembled entirely from archive footage, it builds a devastatingly intimate portrait of Amy Winehouse without a single staged interview — a masterclass in shaping a life from found material.

But Purely observational and unbearably sad by the end; there's no artifice or humour to soften it.

Amy poster

Marley2012no page yet

A sprawling, warm, comprehensive look at Bob Marley's life and music that trusts the man's own charisma to carry a three-hour runtime.

But Conventional in structure where Cave's film is anything but — this is the straightforward biography version of a musician's story.

The Devil and Daniel Johnston2006

A stranger, more unsettling music doc about an outsider artist whose mental illness and songwriting are tangled together in ways the film doesn't try to neaten up.

But Considerably darker and less controlled than Cave's carefully composed persona piece; this one is genuinely troubling in places.

The Devil and Daniel Johnston poster

Marina Abramović: The Artist Is Present2012no page yet

A different art form entirely, but the same question: what happens when a person's whole practice is performing a version of themselves in public.

But It's about performance art, not music, so the connection is thematic rather than tonal — don't expect songs.

Crossfire Hurricane2012no page yet

The Rolling Stones narrate their own myth in voiceover over vintage footage, control freaks curating their legend in real time — a blunter version of what Cave does with more art-house polish.

But Fairly conventional rockumentary shape once you get past the framing; less formally adventurous than Cave's film.

This Is Spinal Tap1984

Same genre, opposite register: both films stage a rock persona as a performance for the camera, one earnestly, one as farce, and seeing them together sharpens what each is actually doing.

The mockumentary that invented the rockumentary's comic double, sending up every pompous, self-mythologising gesture that Cave's film plays completely straight.

But It's broad, silly comedy — if you want the wistful, art-house register of the original, this will feel like a different planet.

This Is Spinal Tap poster

Waking Life2001

Swap the car rides and therapy sessions for a dream-logic wander through Austin, and you get the same trick in a different medium: real thought dressed in a fictional frame to get at something too slippery for straight documentary.

An animated film built from real philosophical conversations, rotoscoped into a dreamlike wander through questions of identity and consciousness — hypnotic, talky, unlike almost anything else.

But There's no plot to speak of and the philosophising can tip into pretension; patience for meandering ideas is required.

Waking Life poster

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