Idiot Prayer – Nick Cave Alone at Alexandra Palace – Idiot Prayer (2020)

Directed by: Nick Cave | 103 minutes | music, documentary | With: Nick Cave

Followers of the sport of darts may know London’s Alexandra Palace – a gigantic pre-war hilltop event hall – from the World Cup. Disused for a while because of corona, it is exactly this issue that brought Nick Cave, after canceling his concerts, to the idea of ​​giving a solo performance at this location, accompanied only by a piano. The performance, recorded in June this year, will be streamed for fans.

And so the idea for ‘Idiot Prayer’ was born, also the name of one of Cave’s songs. In the opening scene we see Cave strolling through his palace like a lonely king, a striking image. Cave the musician still has that special mix of pastor and exorcist, a combination that shows off well later in life in a sober setting. As in his work from the nineties, amply represented here.

Dark themes such as death, always present in Cave’s work, were given extra eloquence during that period with ‘The Boatman’s Call’, an album dedicated to a broken heart. Later, Cave lost a son, and the work to mourn was already there, but needed less and less—just a piano and a recital. After the opening scene, we see Cave sitting at his piano in an empty room for an hour and a half, surrounded only by paper scores.

This man does not only find persuasiveness in his own psyche or its faltering through the events of life, the setting of the empty Ally Pally in corona times can be called ideal. It is therefore not routine, but it is pure. Eighties gritty like “Mercy Seat” even calms down between works like “Brompton Oratory,” which portrays a heartbroken character petrified. You can watch it with a full room, perhaps an empty room is more intimate and desirable with such material.