This Much I Know to Be True review – Nick Cave on music, art and healing

There’s a sweet moment in this mostly music documentary about rock star Nick Cave, in which he talks about having always defined himself in the past as a musician or a performer, but now he thinks of himself increasingly as a father or a husband. He even jokes that recently he took the government’s advice to retrain during the pandemic and became a ceramicist, specialising in mock-Meissen figurines showing the devil at various stages of a melancholy life, several of which enigmatically involved sailors.

As the soliloquy says, one man in his time plays many parts, and in Cave’s case one of those roles could be described as semi-professional documentary subject, as there have already been quite a few films about him – most notably Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard’s inventive 2014 portrait 20,000 Days on Earth. Just two years later, The Assassination of Jesse James director Andrew Dominik made another film about Cave, One More Time With Feeling, observing him at an incredibly painful time soon after the death of one of his sons, a tragedy barely mentioned but deeply felt both in that latter film and in this, a sort-of sequel, made before the death of another son, Jethro Lazenby.

At that point, Cave seemed to have healed at least a little, finding comfort not just in music and making, but also in listening to others’ pain. We see him reading messages left by fans, posts where they share their own losses and challenges, and he responds with encouragement and warmth, like the priest in a virtual church dedicated to himself, but with a strong pastoral element all the same.

Elsewhere the film engages with Cave and Warren Ellis’ creative bond, one that’s produced some sublime work but also self-indulgent noodling (of which there’s a little too much here). Indeed, some might wish the spotlight was on Ellis more, a fascinating character who may be the more musically gifted of the pair, but not as capable of holding the spotlight like Cave – who has his suits, rumbly baritone and carefully coiffed too-black hair. Nevertheless, there is much to enjoy, not least for fans of Marianne Faithfull, here on delightfully cranky form when called upon to contribute vocals for a performance.