Cobain: Montage of Heck

Some say that you're not a true rock and roll legend until you've had an extensive authorized documentary made about your legacy. Just kidding, nobody says that. Kurt Cobain was a legend as soon as Nevermind hit record stores, and his legacy continues today, immortalized by Nirvana and the massive impact his genius had on punk rock. But not only was he one of the best rockers who ever lived, Kurt Cobain was one of the most extraordinary and misunderstood minds of his generation, whose own brilliance caused his self destruction. He's a complex and intricate spider web of a person, and Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck goes on the deepest and most intimate exploration of this enigmatic genius that has ever been done.

Montage of Heck chronicles Cobain's entire life, beginning with his parents meeting and Kurt's childhood, all the way up to his suicide in 1994 which is nothing more than a title card at an abrupt end of the film. Don't think that this is a Nirvana documentary, or a Courtney Love documentary, or any other kind of documentary other than a Kurt Cobain documentary. Montage of Heck examining his relationship with his family, his lovers, his band, and Nirvana's massive following which played on Kurt as a blessing and a maddening curse.

Montage of Heck is directed by Brett Morgen, the director of my personal favorite ESPN 30 for 30 episode, June 17th, 1994, a sports documentary that only uses news footage from one particular day in sports to tell its story. Morgen employs similar techniques here. The amount of home video footage that exists of Cobain from his adolescence all the way through his relationship with Courtney Love (which includes some pretty disturbing drug induced home video), is astounding. Montage of Heck is brilliantly pieced together through this home video footage, interviews with people close to Kurt, audio recordings of Kurt and friends, and Kurt's own journal writings and drawings, gloriously animated in what makes for the most fascinating look into the mind of this troubled genius.

Some of the best parts of the film take us through his journals where his mad scientist scribbles and macabre H.R. Giger-esque drawings show us his reactions and feelings towards the band, their rising popularity, Courtney Love, etc. all to paint a fascinatingly intricate portrait of this man. To call Montage of Heck an examination of Kurt Cobain would be doing a disservice to this great doc. Montage of Heck is less of an examination and more of a journey, a violent yet graceful boat ride into the seas of one of rock and roll's most dynamic minds. It's a film that is as beautiful as it is brutal, and as sentimental as it is visceral.

This is the most honest and in depth insight into a man who seemed to have everything, yet battled demons all his life to find what really could make him happy. Sadly, those demons won, but not before Kurt Cobain could be immortalized as a rock and roll icon. And now we're lucky enough to have this film which celebrates all that he left behind. A film that shows us not only who Kurt Cobain was on stage, but who he was as a passionately flawed human being who wanted nothing more than to love, be loved, and rock the f out.

It's been more than 20 years since the death of Kurt Cobain, and while there have been numerous documentaries, books, and television programs devoted to telling his story, it's difficult to point to any one account as being the definitive portrait of the Nirvana frontman. But Brett Morgen's fascinating film Cobain: Montage of Heck is more than worthy of that title.

Chronicling Cobain's life and career through never-before-seen home videos, sketches, audio recordings and diary entries, Montage of Heck provides an unprecedented look into the mind of one of rock music's most iconic figures. This is the first film to have the full support and cooperation of Cobain's family, and the wealth of material resulting from this partnership is staggering.

Most of the journal entries featured in the film have been animated and set to music, providing a unique and frenetic energy that seems to distract the audience from the fact that they're being forced to read in order to keep up with the narrative. Sometimes they're nothing more than a few short words, other times they're entire pages of ideas and song lyrics and scribbles, but they all showcase a mind that functioned with the same sort of reckless abandon with which Cobain played music.

But the animation isn't just limited to the words on the pages of Cobain's many journals. Indeed, there are several fully-animated sequences that are combined with recordings of Cobain recounting anecdotes from various periods in his life. These scenes, from animators Hisko Hulsing and Stefan Nadelman, have an almost dreamlike quality, and breathe an incredible amount of life into Cobain's own narration.

Montage of Heck is also peppered with interviews, with frequent quotes from Cobain's parents, his first serious girlfriend, former bandmate Krist Novoselic, and even his widow, Courtney Love (conspicuously absent is Foo Fighters frontman Dave Grohl, who served as the band's drummer for the bulk of their short career). Once again, the cooperation of these individuals provides tremendous insight into the series of events that led Cobain into his downward spiral.

But the most emotional material, and certainly the most difficult to watch, is a lengthy segment during the film's second hour devoted to home video footage of Cobain and his wife. We see them holed up in their apartment during a heroin-fueled binge, with frequent cuts to news headlines about their drug problems, and Cobain's angry handwritten retorts. We see them at home after the birth of their daughter, Frances Bean Cobain, taking baths together and cracking jokes, obviously in love despite the undeniable toxicity of their relationship.

Far from the sort of talking head style that is so common with other music documentaries, Montage of Heck instead offers the most intimate look at Cobain that we've ever seen. From the casual listener to the hardcore fan, every viewer can expect to learn something about Cobain that they didn't know before, leaving with even more appreciation for his art, and more sorrow over his tragic self-destruction.

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.

This is a documentary that presents another side of Kurt Cobain unseen by the public. What many don't understand is that, like Dylan's 3rd album, "Another side of Bob Dylan," this is simply all this movie is, another perspective of the great grunge genius. Kurt was never a man, always a boy with the gift of genius. Unfortunately, all the risk factors for suicide were there: childhood abandonment, genetic family history of bi-polar illness and suicide (two uncles committed suicide), addiction to heroin, stress of fame, Severe Depression and, of course, a highly unhealthy and destructive relationship with Courtney Love. He never had a chance really, and those who loved him had no clue, couldn't have, at the path of destruction he was on. And yet, he left us with perhaps the best rock songs ever, especially on Nevermind, and I am sure his legacy will last for a long, long time. The scenes in this movie depict a Cobain at his best and his worst, strung out in his daughter's presence and raging on the stage. Like Amy Winehouse, Cobain was on a mission to self-destruction. We've seen this before. Syd Barrett,Ian Curtis, Nick Drake, the list goes on. For those blessed with genius, the normal developmental milestones don't mean quite so much. At 21, most of us are struggling with independent living skills, young adulthood, etc. Not so with Kurt Cobain. He was busy proving to the world his potential, which like Dylan, he was very aware he was predestined for. The Blade-runner line, "The light that burns twice as bright burns half as long" is all too applicable to the life of Cobain, especially in light of his bi-polar illness. When I heard, "You Know You're Right," I couldn't help but to feel helpless, angry at what might have come had he somehow lived, had he accepted Duff mckagan's invitation to chill with him that night (a Mckagan knew he was suffering). But like Poe, his creativity came from a well of mental illness, and that is the frame we must view Cobain in, for the kind of illness he suffered from is the kind that cannot last in it's piercing incarnation, at least without medication, be it heroin or lithium.

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.