“What happens when an event occurs that is so catastrophic that you just change?… When you look inside the mirror, you recognize the person you were, but the person inside the skin is a different person,” Nick Cave ponders in the trailer for the upcoming third documentary following Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. The first, A Road to God Knows Where by Uli M. Schüppel was a road film following the band on tour in 1989, and the second, Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard’s 20,000 Days on Earth, was a part-scripted work of docufiction following Cave for 24 hours during the process of recording 2013’s Push the Sky Away.
The new film, One More Time With Feeling by Killing Them Softly director Andrew Dominik, will show on over 650 theaters worldwide for one night only, on the eve of the release of the Bad Seeds’ upcoming album, Skeleton Tree. Apart from the creative process behind the album, the film will also focus — perhaps somewhat in the abstract (as in the above quote) — on the recent tragic death of Nick Cave’s 15-year-old son. Per the description on Cave’s website:
Originally a performance based concept, One More Time With Feeling evolved into something much more significant as Dominik delved into the tragic backdrop of the writing and recording of the album. Interwoven throughout the Bad Seeds’ filmed performance of the new album are interviews and footage shot by Dominik, accompanied by Cave’s intermittent narration and improvised rumination.
The trailer — all shown in exquisite black and white, though the film is also shot in color, as well as both in 2D and 3D — features the band as they record music from their upcoming 16th studio album (though all instrumentation is drowned out here by a dramatic violin).
Dominik and Cave had worked together previously, as the musician scored the director’s Brad Pitt-starring western, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford.
Watch the trailer:
Here’s the album’s cover art:
Skeleton Tree will be released on September 9 on vinyl, CD, and across all digital platforms. One More Time With Feeling will screen on September 8.
[Via Pitchfork]