The result is Andrew Dominik’s making-of documentary One More Time With Feeling, featuring interviews with the Seeds and narration by Cave himself.
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Cave wrote the album in the wake of losing his 15-year-old son Arthur in a tragic accident in July 2015. An inquest heard he had taken the hallucinogen LSD before plunging from the cliff and suffering a brain injury – he was taken to the Royal Sussex County hospital where he later died. Arthur had died halfway through making it.
“Skeleton Tree” could be the most vulnerable album of Cave’s career. That prospect was very alarming to him.
“There was no way for him to discuss the record without talking about the context in which the record was made which was the death of his son”, Dominik told Reuters at the Venice film festival. His instinct in making the film was one of self-preservation: “it was a way to talk about what happened, but there was a certain safety in doing it with someone he knew”. Dominik opted to shoot it largely in black and white and 3D, though there are short sections in colour.
One More Time With Feeling is not an easy work, it is layered, complex, angry and amusing, and immensely musical as it digs deep into the band’s creative process.
For reasons that seem sort of masochistic, Cave invited a film crew into the studio for the recording process.
“Nick deals with everything in life by working”, the moviemaker explains. “Perhaps momentarily. But this thing is so big, you can’t even get your arms around it”.
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Due to demand cinemas have scrapped the idea of only showing it for one night and now have screening on the 9, 10 and 11 of September too.
