Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck

This documentary told me little I didn't already know about the great Kurt Cobain. With supposed access to numerous home videos, journals and members of Kurt's immediate family, friends and band mates, I find it curious the aspects of Kurt's life the director chose to focus on. It is evident that the aim of the documentary is to portray Kurt as a troubled and depressed soul, yet it doesn't provide any real insight into the events that created such a feeling in him. One such oddity is the interview with Kurt's mother which never delved deeper than the surface points of some of the major events of Kurt's life (ones that we've already learned more about from other journalists in years past). For instance: They touch on Kurt's homelessness as a teen, yet don't venture into the circumstances that caused his homelessness or have any depth of discussion about this major point in Kurt's life. How Kurt came to be the man and artist that captivated so many is still as mysterious now as it was before I watched this documentary.

Apart from the documentary's questionable focus and content, the style in which the story is told is well done, with fluid interchanges between Kurt's journal entries, old home videos, photos, sound recordings and interviews. The use of animation helped pull everything together and added a dreamy dimension to the story telling.

All in all an enjoyable, well made film, but an informative and insightful documentary it is not.

I was hoping for this film to be great. As a Nirvana fan (most people who claim to like Nirvana have no idea what 'Incesticide' or even 'Bleach' is), I was looking forward to a thorough insight into this beloved figure who is still shrouded in a fog of misrepresentation and false hero worship. Unfortunately the film did not live up to expectations as it seemed the Director, "Brett Morgan" was more concerned in making the film aesthetically pleasing than emotionally interesting.

First off, a few positives about the film. 1. The way it portrays Courtney Love: She is despised by most music fans who believe she ruined Nirvana, but it's pretty clear that Kurt's self destruction was mostly his doing and his natural tendencies which add an appropriate sense of melancholy to the movie. 2. Some of the montages were nice when not excruciatingly overdone. 3. The music of course was good, it had a wide range from their b-sides (Dive), their first album (Mr. Moustache) and their popular stuff (Territorial Pissings) Including some fascinating covers of the Velvet Underground and the Beatles. 4. The story about Kurt and the "Retarded Girl" was absolutely fascinating.

However, the pacing of the film is truly awful. The first hour trudges along after a promising start and becomes bogged down in the Director's own agenda to show off his style. By far the best scenes in the film is just raw footage of Kurt and Courtney living alone in their dingy apartments and hotel rooms.

The film is appropriately titled, as the film is almost solely montages that don't progress the story and just serve again to stroke the Director's ego. Another example is the overuse of EXTREMELY LOUD to absolute silence.

Also, the ending of the film is not only unsatisfying, but extremely clichéd. There are countless films that have the same end title card and it felt awfully lazy. This is also disappointing because we experience none of the emotional damage that Cobains death has, which would have been far more interesting than 5 minutes of repetitive montages.

What's sad is that this film claimed to be the definitive Cobain Doco, but it's so obvious that there is plenty more interesting video and audio recordings made by Cobain HIMSELF that were left out in order to make way for dead end animation montages and hyper editing. The film could have been just as emotionally effective with 20 minutes cut from it.

However, I am still at least glad I saw the film, all the less wanky stuff was honestly well directed and Cobain's home video footage is nothing short of riveting and sometimes becomes really funny and beautiful.

So I give this film a 6. At the end of the day, I feel it would have been far more interesting just to sort through 3 hours of Cobain's home recordings than to watch a Director trying to steal the limelight from his charismatic subjects.

I have read a couple Bios of Nirvana and found this doc to be fairly simplistic. Still I enjoyed seeing the unseen footage and cartoon montages. What I was really hoping for was a bit more focus of Kurt when he lived in Evergreen and was dating Toby Vail(would have liked to of seen her in the doc). The experience he had during that time is what inspired him to write many if not all of the songs from Nevermind. What the doc did include was well done. I also wish there was a few more people included in the doc. Dave Grohl, Chad Channing, Toby Vail, to name a few. Still A must watch for any Nirvana/Kurt Cobain fan. The story of Kurt Cobain is a frustrating one his personality mixed with his addictions was what ultimately led to his downfall. I really wish he would have sucked it up and stuck around a bit. I will admit the Doc did a good job capturing just how sensitive and awkward he was before during and after his fame.

An overly long and indulgent disappointment of a rock doc that brings nothing new to the party. Much is left out with gaps filled in by inexplicable meandering 'art'. Be very suspicious of 'officialy sanctioned' films, especially those that miss out key figures, white wash others and look like they were thrown together.

I found Montage of Heck to be a scatter-brained documentary that couldn't decide which direction to go. It grabs at various forms of media culled from Cobain's family, and tosses them into a blender, with splashes of interviews and band footage.

There were some stunningly rotoscoped animation, using narration from Cobain, that briefly takes you through his dejected teenage years in Aberdeen, Washington. They also rendered the years Cobain spent living with his first girlfriend, Tracy Marander, who supported him when Nirvana started getting noticed. Marander isn't shown (only in interviews and rare photos), we just see how Kurt spent his days being creative while she was at work. Anyway, not long after, the band signed to Sub Pop and released Bleach.

There were also drawings and writings (many would make Jack Kerouac's "spontaneous prose" seem lucid by comparison) from his sketchbooks / journals, that were brought to life using muted computer graphics. These were scattered throughout, and became laborious after about the 10th time. Still, the music that accompanied them were great. We get to hear plenty of unreleased material, and I even noticed some Nirvana covers, which felt redundant.

Now, cue in Courtney Love. Sigh. It was annoying seeing her all dolled up by a makeup artist, chain-smoking and sounding incredibly untruthful about Kurt's last couple of months. I won't ruin it, but it's towards the end of the film and it made me more suspicious of her. The home videos of Kurt, Courtney, and Frances Bean were quite touching, although at times it got dark, especially some moments with just Kurt and Courtney (not 100% on who recorded them). You know he was the happiest he's ever been, but they were also plunging into the abyss of heroin and other drugs.

Overall, Montage of Heck started off as a sweet concoction that ultimately left me with a bitter aftertaste. I hear that 'About a Son' is the superior documentary, so I'll watch that in hopes of getting a deeper insight into Kurt Cobain and Nirvana.