One More Time With Feeling: 'A Melancholy Document of the Grief of a Family Torn Apart'
One More Time With Feeling follows Nick Cave and his band The Bad Seeds as they record their first album since Nick's son Arthur tragically died in 2013. Arthur was 13, and experimenting with LSD for the first time, when he fell from a cliff to his death near the family home in Brighton. Much of the album was already written, and the documentary commissioned, when the tragedy happened. The melancholic songs foreshadowed disaster, and other, more diaristic ones were added afterwards. Long-gone are the narrative songs of the Murder Ballads years, as these songs are more akin to ones off No More Shall We Part, or Push The Sky Away.
The film opens with Cave's long time friend and collaborator Warren Ellis being interviewed in the back of a taxi, clearly struggling to discuss the private life of his friend. The camera cuts out and Ellis explains to the director that he is uncomfortable discussing the situation. Later in the film Cave acknowledges Ellis's role in his grief, with the line "Look at him, holding it all together".
Shot almost entirely in black and white, Cave's signature style is written on every frame. The contrast is striking, and the music videos that are strewn through the film appear as if they are reflected in black motor oil. The first song on the album (and therefore in the film) is Jesus Alone, and contains the most detailed reference to Arthur's death in its opening line. "You fell from the sky, and crash landed in a field near the river Adur". Arthur's name however isn't spoken until around half way in to the film, and his death is often alluded to as the 'event', rather than openly accepted.
Interviews make up a lot of the dialogue in the film, and in them we get a real insight into the family. Cave seems lost, often contradicting things he said earlier in the film, and questioning why he is doing it at all. At one point he says that the director told him he looked like a "battered monument", and is unsure whether or not to take this as a compliment. During one conversation Cave describes falling crying into the arms of a friend, only to realise those were the arms of a stranger. He goes on to describe a heartfelt message of solidarity he received in a bakery, which made him wonder: "When did you become an object of pity?"
The usually looming and intimidating Cave appears frail and hopeless throughout most of the film, and he seems on the verge of tears often. During some of the more emotional songs his voice is timid and full of sorrow, and he can’t remember the chords. Later however, his voice becomes transformed into the confident and soulful one we are used to. It is as if through music he is able to somehow overcome his grief, if only temporarily. To paraphrase: he is using songwriting as a way to distill the chaos down to something more logical, as a way of making sense of it.
There is much synchronicity in the film, and at one point an interior shot of Arthur's room briefly shows two prints by artist Pure Evil, who also sadly lost a child in the same year.
The film finishes on a somber tone, with a soliloquy by Nick, whilst all of the band, cast, and crew are shown stood against the same white backdrop. This segment ends with Warren Ellis, followed by the three remaining family members, and an empty space where Arthur would have stood. The stark white cliffs and some remembrance ribbons that are tied onto the fence where Arthur died are then shown, whilst a song sang by Earl and Arthur plays the film out.
It would have been totally understandable for Cave and his family to have decided against doing this film in light of what happened. Instead, they decided to throw light upon the very personal and intimate grieving process that follows the premature death of a loved one. They grieve openly, and hold nothing back, and in this they will no doubt help others to overcome their own sadness.
One More Time With Feeling is out now.
BENJAMIN MURPHY
