Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck

Directed by Brett Morgen (2015) ***

It’s always ironic, but by now shouldn’t be surprising, how radical cutting-edge music sounds at the time of its creation, and how safe it sounds decades later. I watched, minutes ago, a recent video of young children hearing for the first time the music of Nirvana and appraising it. Two words they used repeatedly to describe the music were “mellow” and “chill”. Kurt Cobain might have had a good laugh at that: at the time of their breakthrough, they were both a resurgence and, in many ways, the last gasp of hard rock music’s presence in the mainstream, the culmination of over a decade’s worth of alternate, indie and underground (punk) rock groups toiling away for small groups of fans, beyond the notice of the general public.

It’s unfortunate that the one such group which was able to break the mainstream was also fronted by a fragile personality exceedingly unlikely to be able to accept and deal with it. Kurt Cobain both wanted and dreaded fame, had zero interest in playing along with corporate promotion schemes and had longstanding mental and physical health problems untenable with the “rock star” lifestyle.

Brett Morgen chose to direct Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck much the same way another tragic documentary was made, Asif Kapadia’s Amy, about the short life of another self-destructing singer, Amy Winehouse (Morgen and Kapadia’s films were coincidentally made in the same year). Like Amy, Montage of Heck has no narration. Except for some short, animated sequences with soundtracks based on Cobain’s recordings, and animations of his drawings, the film is made up of archival film footage, interviews old and new, and copious shots of Cobain’s diary and writing notes. The many faceted portrait reveals a talented but disturbed artist who was often his own worst enemy.

By all accounts, Cobain was a happy, sensitive, gregarious young child, already holding guitars and singing at the age of two (he was also a voracious illustrator). His world seems to have irrevocably altered when his parents divorced at the age of nine. Cobain became withdrawn, angry, ashamed, unruly and, for years, was shunted back and forth to live for short times with various relatives. He eventually fell into the punk rock scene, first as a fan and then a participant. How he made such an artistic leap from disgruntled teen to Nirvana founder is not clear from the documentary, primarily because there’s so little primary material to utilize.

Brett Morgen uses many home movies shot near the end of Cobain’s life (suicide by shotgun) starring a drugged-out, barely awake Cobain, his longtime punk rocker wife, Courtney Love, and their newborn daughter, Frances. These films are both sad and scary to watch. Seeing them, I couldn’t help but be reminded of an earlier, equally famous, dissipated and reckless couple, F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald – who were also responsible for a newborn daughter, likewise named Francis. It’s easy to imagine that home movies of the Fitzgerald’s drunken binges and Zelda’s mental illness would be equally hard to watch.

Brett Morgen ends the film before Cobain’s suicide (a subject well-covered elsewhere, though I recommend reading Cobain’s suicide note online). Cobain gave so many clues to his imminent suicide, from his music lyrics to his performances and notes. At one concert, footage included here, Cobain is wheeled out on stage in decrepit, old-man makeup, pulled up to sing into the mic, and then dramatically falls to the floor, laying still as if dead for an uncomfortably long time. As his suicide note states, he was too honest to fake what he was feeling.

—Michael R. Neno, 2018 January 8