“All of our days are numbered. We cannot afford to be idle. To act on a bad idea is better than to not act at all because the worth of the idea never becomes apparent until you do it.” –Nick Cave, 20,000 Days on Earth (2014).

“I don’t know why the fuck I’m doing this.” –Nick Cave, One More Time with Feeling (2016).

When I saw the news in late 2015 that Nick Cave's teenage son Arthur had been killed in an accident, my second thought, after sadness and sympathy for the Cave family, was that the next Bad Seeds album was going to be a hell of a thing. It felt like a sick and shameful thought, but really, it’s a natural one. My only relationship to Nick Cave is with what his work means to me, so any thoughts I have about his personal life can only be filtered through his music. Out of this tragedy comes One More Time with Feeling, a film that confronts the dichotomy between being an artist and being a human. How can you mourn privately when your job is to sell your emotions?

This is the second documentary about Cave’s personal life, only two years after Jane Pollard and Iain Forsyth’s 20,000 Days on Earth, and in many ways, it feels like the somber second chapter of a trilogy. 20,000 Days used winkingly-staged interviews and metaphorical encounters to illustrate the ways in which we become the myths we invent for ourselves. One More Time is exactly the sequel you would script if it weren’t the truth, a study in what happens when something catastrophic crashes through your reality and demolishes your understanding of your own life.