A masterpiece that was inspired by tragedy

This is a most extraordinary film of a most extraordinary album. One More Time With

Feeling is a subtle, poetic and hypnotic documentary shot in black and white 3D during the recording of Nick Cave’s new album, Skeleton

Key, during which the singer-songwriter grapples with a family tragedy. Both are touching meditations on grief and psychological survival, alleviated by love, friendship and humour.

Film and album skirt warily around the dark heart of the tale. (In July last year, Cave’s 15-year-old son, Arthur, fell from a cliff near Brighton, having taken LSD for the first time with a friend.)

Cave is the most brilliant lyricist, a songwriter to be considered in the same elevated company as Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Joni Mitchell and Paul Simon. The 58-year-old Australian was in the process of writing and recording a new album with his band The Bad Seeds when the accident happened. He invited a friend, the brilliant Australian filmmaker Andrew Dominik (Chopper, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, Killing Them Softly )to document the sessions.

The film focuses on Cave but draws in his wife, designer Susie Bick, and Arthur’s twin Earl. The black-and-white 3D pulls the viewer into a world of suffering but reminds us that we can only reach so far. But while the film is a lighter experience than it has any right to be, the music is as heavy as one might expect of Cave. Much of Skeleton Key was written by the time of Arthur’s death, and draws on Cave’s usual pool of Biblical, mythological and surrealist imagery.

The album is a melancholic masterpiece not for the fainthearted. The film – essential viewing for Cave fans – is showing in 350 screens around the world until Sunday. I recommend it to anyone who has ever thought about the fragility of existence and the purpose of art.