Dir: Brett Morgen
Year: 2015
Cast: Kurt Cobain, Courtney Love, Chris Noveselic
Genre: Documentary/Rockumentary
Cert: 15
Rating: ★★★★
IMDb
Brett Morgen's seriously in depth and personal look at the life of Kurt Cobain is raw right from the outset. It opens with some of his live antics set to the cracking Nevermind hit, Territorial Pissings and begins to fade down to only the vocals, Kurt screeching so loud you can here his voice box being torn apart. It explores a chunk of his childhood with interviews with his parents and then moves to his teenage years with ex-girlfriend interviews, mostly told through animation based on his own diary entries. These were actually some of the most interesting scenes because felt like it genuinely captured all the shit that was going through his head at that age. It's shortly lived however once Nirvana come into the picture themselves.
From then on it stops feeling like a documentary and begins to feel like a collection of behind the scenes and bonus features from a Nirvana live show dvd. Not that it's a bad thing in any way, but it was a bit unusual. It felt like an interactive feature where you get to read animated versions of his diary entries spliced with pictures of him from magazines and live shows. Occasionally harking back to some interviews with Chris Noveselic and more horrifyingly, Courtney Love. It was cool that she allowed Morgen to have 100% access to anything he wanted from their lives in regards to recordings, videos, demos, family footage - anything. He even stumbled upon a sex tape among all of the files; no doubt that slowed production down for a week or two as he probably was in hospital getting pins removed from his eyes.
It has to be said, that while I absolutely ADORE Nirvana's music and their drummer Dave Grohl is a living legend, I do think that Kurt was a fucking knob-end of the highest order. I always have, and this documentary proves I'm right... BUT, it does also showed a side to Kurt I hadn't seen before, one where he isn't such a mopey prick. When you see some of the most underground interviews he did, him, Chris and Dave were all actually very witty. So it was nice to see there was a lot of character to the chap, but it was greatly overshadowed by how much of a twat he was. It was interesting to see how much he genuinely hated fame, not in a "non-conformist, too cool for fame" kinda way, but in the sense that it drove him insane.
It's clear from a young age that criticism is something he never took well, so when massive publications started critiquing his music in a negative way (if at all, considering they were huge), it would get to him more than anyone in the band or nearly anyone in the industry at the time. His reaction to that was to go on "hiatus" for a few months... which meant a heroin binge and lots of painting with Courtney (who was shooting up while pregnant... geebag). That lead to probably one of the more bizarre and harrowing moments of the whole documentary, Kurt and Courtney trying to cut his daughter's hair while arguing and very heavily strung out. It's like something you'd see as a joke version of drug addiction, but this was far too real. Courtney and Kurt's parents didn't want this scene to be featured but as Morgen had final cut of all the footage he was given, it was. It was for the better too, made for a more unflinching, raw feel.
Overall it's a very strong documentary and it was great to delve a little deeper into the behind the scenes life of Kurt, but it's nothing you would rush to watch again, even as a massive Nirvana fan. Francis Bean Cobain, Kurt and Cuntney's daughter, thanked Morgen after a screening of this saying this is exactly the kind of film she always wanted to see about her dad, something no holds barred and showed how he actually was and not how general media perceived him. I do wish that there was some interviews with Dave Grohl and Buzz Osborne; there was a brief tape recording with Buzz but would have been nice to see a proper interview.
As for Dave, he was apparently in the middle of shooting the HBO musical series, Foo Fighters: Sonic Highways at the time of this production, so he wasn't available to do any interviews. Morgen was satisfied with his final cut so he didn't bother getting back to him. Should have got some post documentary interviews for the dvd at least!
From then on it stops feeling like a documentary and begins to feel like a collection of behind the scenes and bonus features from a Nirvana live show dvd. Not that it's a bad thing in any way, but it was a bit unusual. It felt like an interactive feature where you get to read animated versions of his diary entries spliced with pictures of him from magazines and live shows. Occasionally harking back to some interviews with Chris Noveselic and more horrifyingly, Courtney Love. It was cool that she allowed Morgen to have 100% access to anything he wanted from their lives in regards to recordings, videos, demos, family footage - anything. He even stumbled upon a sex tape among all of the files; no doubt that slowed production down for a week or two as he probably was in hospital getting pins removed from his eyes.
It has to be said, that while I absolutely ADORE Nirvana's music and their drummer Dave Grohl is a living legend, I do think that Kurt was a fucking knob-end of the highest order. I always have, and this documentary proves I'm right... BUT, it does also showed a side to Kurt I hadn't seen before, one where he isn't such a mopey prick. When you see some of the most underground interviews he did, him, Chris and Dave were all actually very witty. So it was nice to see there was a lot of character to the chap, but it was greatly overshadowed by how much of a twat he was. It was interesting to see how much he genuinely hated fame, not in a "non-conformist, too cool for fame" kinda way, but in the sense that it drove him insane.
It's clear from a young age that criticism is something he never took well, so when massive publications started critiquing his music in a negative way (if at all, considering they were huge), it would get to him more than anyone in the band or nearly anyone in the industry at the time. His reaction to that was to go on "hiatus" for a few months... which meant a heroin binge and lots of painting with Courtney (who was shooting up while pregnant... geebag). That lead to probably one of the more bizarre and harrowing moments of the whole documentary, Kurt and Courtney trying to cut his daughter's hair while arguing and very heavily strung out. It's like something you'd see as a joke version of drug addiction, but this was far too real. Courtney and Kurt's parents didn't want this scene to be featured but as Morgen had final cut of all the footage he was given, it was. It was for the better too, made for a more unflinching, raw feel.
Overall it's a very strong documentary and it was great to delve a little deeper into the behind the scenes life of Kurt, but it's nothing you would rush to watch again, even as a massive Nirvana fan. Francis Bean Cobain, Kurt and Cuntney's daughter, thanked Morgen after a screening of this saying this is exactly the kind of film she always wanted to see about her dad, something no holds barred and showed how he actually was and not how general media perceived him. I do wish that there was some interviews with Dave Grohl and Buzz Osborne; there was a brief tape recording with Buzz but would have been nice to see a proper interview.
As for Dave, he was apparently in the middle of shooting the HBO musical series, Foo Fighters: Sonic Highways at the time of this production, so he wasn't available to do any interviews. Morgen was satisfied with his final cut so he didn't bother getting back to him. Should have got some post documentary interviews for the dvd at least!
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