Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck

I’ve said it other reviews and I’ll say it here: the best documentaries get out of their own damned way and let the subject speak for itself. They neither idolize or vilify. They are there to document an event or a life, and let the case present itself as it should be. Montage Of Heck’s goal is not unique, but it’s presentation is. Instead of relying on talking heads and their reminiscences of the subject — being Kurt Cobain — the movie uses them scarcely and instead uses clips from home movies, artwork, media coverage, articles, and music. For some of the set up, and the occasional I-was-there perspective, they do bring in his mother Wendy, ex-girlfriend Tracy Marander, or Nirvana bassist Krist Novoselic, or widow Courtney Love. But a vast majority of the movie is built on family home movies and TV clips and interviews he did while alive, making Kurt his own narrator despite being dead over 20 years at this movie’s release. This presentation allows Montage to get around Kurt not being here, and by letting him tell his story, it humanizes Kurt to a degree never seen before. For us 90’s kids, he was a rock god and a spokesman for our generation. This is a movie about a man, a father, a husband, a friend, a son, and most of all a human being, who just so happened to play music for a living in a band that became world famous overnight. The first problem with the movie is that it’s very purpose has already been accomplished through the normal passage of time. Nirvana are now classic rock for Generation X. Those of us who grew up feeling the angst and rage in his words and voice when he sang “Smells Like Teen Spirit” aren’t 15 anymore. We don’t have teen angst; we have receding hairlines. We don’t have misunderstanding parents; we have payments on an SUV we use to carry OUR kids around. He’s no longer this icon, this totem in our lives; he’s a singer in a band we loved as a teenager. We may still listen, but those emotions are gone, and so is the mystique surrounding him. This movie’s goal is laudable, but it’s already happened. And that brings me to the next big flaw: this documentary feels intrusive. It had cooperation from Courtney and his mom and his sister and his band mates and was executive produced by his daughter, and all of that is great. This is a story THEY wanted to tell. But is it a story HE wanted to tell? We can’t really ask him that. So we’re left with this uncomfortably intimate peek into his life; home movies playing with Frances as a baby, shaving in the bathroom while Courtney gets out of the shower, and so on. We see artwork he never released, hear demos he never completed, and diary entries meant for his eyes only, and they’re crafted into a narrative that is intensely humanizing and personal … but it feels too personal. It’s like looking into someone’s windows from the sidewalk. The curtains may be open, but that doesn’t mean you have the right to watch. And the subject of narrative brings up the third and final problem: how much of this is crafted to fit a narrative? There’s two moments in the last half hour that stand out; one, the narration is talking about the release of In Utero and how he’s recuperated from the whirlwind of the past year, but it’s a shot of him on stage staring off into the middle distance. Another moment talks about his severe sensitivity to criticism, and the visual is from the Heart-Shaped Box video, of Kurt lying in a field, absent-mindlessly playing with his coat and the flowers around him. It is clear there is some manipulation of moods and sequence of events here. By doing this though, it casts doubt on the entire movie. What of what is seen is real? Why resort to this lame, cheap, and frankly crass manipulation and distortion? If the goal is to let the home movies and the art be a window into Kurt, don’t throw dirt on the window by massaging events and overlaying narration onto unconnected events. Lastly, I don’t know who this is for. Going back to my point about us Gen-X kids, we know the story of Kurt Cobain. We lived it. There is nothing revelatory here at all. Read “Come As You Are: The Story Of Nirvana” by Michael Azerrad, and you’ll get everything you saw here, AND it’s the story of the ENTIRE band, not just Kurt. This movie is old news. For new Nirvana fans, it’s the worst way to be introduced. It jumps over so much of both Kurt’s and Nirvana’s history. So, if we who grew up with him knew all this, and there’s not enough for new fans, what purpose does this serve? It’s a documentary that sounds good on paper. But it’s narrative massaging makes the movie untrustworthy, the home movies feel intrusive, and the subject has already been demystified by the normal passage of time. I guess the subject is appropriate, because the feeling I was left with at the end was “oh well, whatever, never mind”.