If in theaters the period is not the best to find great news, a very interesting film arrived instead in July on an important platform such as MUBI: it is “This Much I Know to Be True”, a documentary by Andrew Dominik focused on on the artistic relationship between Nick Cave and Warren Ellis.
The two great artists are framed as they find themselves composing new songs, which have gone on to form their last two studio albums, namely “Ghosteen” and “Carnage”. In addition to the process of writing the songs, we also see the performance of several pieces complete with a string quartet. Along with Cave and Ellis, their longtime friend and collaborator Marianne Faithfull also appears in the documentary. “This Much I Know to Be True” can undoubtedly be considered as the second part of a diptych started in 2016 with “One More Time With Feeling “, another documentary also directed by Dominik, focused in that case on the making of” Skeleton Tree “and on the pain of the terrible mourning that struck Nick Cave: the death of his fifteen-year-old son Arthur. However, one can fully feel the suffering that pervades the lyrics of the songs, which are wonderful and capable of transporting us to another dimension with a mystical and profoundly spiritual atmosphere.
Not just songs
In addition to the songs we find interesting interventions, including that of Nick Cave who, telling the whole process that led him to the writing of The Red Hand Files, involves the viewer in his world, explaining how thoughts and feelings are put in order in his head and then into music. In addition to the notes and melodies, Cave shows us in the first few minutes the laboratory in which he is making sculptures on the life of the Devil, which should represent human existence in its various existential stages.
“This Much I Know to Be True” is a truly evocative and satisfying audiovisual experience, capable of confirming Andrew Dominik’s skill also as a documentary director: the New Zealand author is best known for “The assassination of Jesse James by the hand of the coward Robert Ford ”and there is great curiosity about his next work,“ Blonde ”, centered on the life of Marilyn Monroe, in competition at the next Venice Film Festival.
Shark Bait
As often happens in the summer months, this year too a film with a ferocious and hungry shark arrives in theaters: it is “Shark Bait”, a new film by James Nunn, former director of “Tower Block” and “One Shot” At the center of the plot is a group of friends who, after a party on the beach, decide to steal some jet skis. While they are in the open sea, however, an unexpected event will force them to stay offshore without being able to return to shore. Missing in the middle of the sea, the boys will find themselves hunted by sharks and will have to fight to survive. A film that definitely smacks of already seen and completely out of time, “Shark Bait” is a product that offers few surprises and that soon ends up boring : the screenplay is on the edge of the infantile and a few thrills are not enough to raise the fortunes of a feature film built on autopilot. Avoidable, also due to a decidedly not very credible cast.
“This Much I Know to Be True”, Nick Cave at the center of an exciting documentary