Film Review | Cobain: Montage of Heck directed by Brett Morgen

They say that you should never meet your heroes.

They’re right.

Academy Award®-nominated Brett Morgen’s acclaimed Kurt Cobain biopic, Montage of Heck, has finally demystified one of my teen idols, humanising him in a way that’s enthralling, if not especially desirable. For years I’ve watched other filmmakers spin theories and try to piece together a picture of the Nirvana frontman from second-hand puzzle pieces that never quite seemed to fit, and read unauthorised biographies that did much the same. I’ve even delved into Cobain’s published journals, only to find the same organised confusion and dejection upon which Nirvana was built and little besides. But throughout my devouring of all this extra-curricular material, the poster image of the long-haired and stubbly-chinned “better looking than Brad Pitt” grunge rocker persisted in my mind; the rock ’n’ roll suicide who burnt out, rather than fading away.

For better or worse, that image is gone.

 
A number of key elements set Morgen’s movie apart from the likes of Nick Broomfield’s incendiary Kurt & Courtney and AJ Schnack’s more pensive About a Son, the most obvious of which are his access to Cobain’s music and his family’s (surprisingly substantial) home media library. The latter offers viewers a less fettered impression of the star-crossed star; the former, context, on both a global and an intimate scale. 

Morgen’s selection of Nirvana songs and soundbites instantly transport viewers back through their memories to the early 1990s, making the movie’s drama all the more immediate and harrowing. Yet, placed as they are at significant moments in Cobain’s life story, their lyrics also offer an illuminating view into their writer’s state of mind when he wrote them. Songs that I thought I knew inside-out have suddenly taken on new meaning for me - an unplugged, clearly heartfelt Lead Belly cover now goes beyond the stage, begging real-life questions of fidelity, as Morgen uses it as a backdrop to Courtney Love’s confession to temptation in London; “Serve the Servants” is suddenly as much a proclamation of purpose as it is maturity; “Smells Like Teen Spirit” is less a call to arms, and more an ironic homage to the movie Over the Edge; even the bonkers “Scentless Apprentice”, believe or not, has a point buried in its inscrutable lyrics, as it encapsulates how Cobain saw himself in the eyes of his parents, albeit a little more obliquely than in “Something in the Way”.

 
Montage of Heck (which takes its name from a 1988 mix tape made by Cobain) is also a technical triumph, dextrously weaving together a variety of media of varying quality to provide a complete multimedia portrait. Ancient voicemail messages, drawings and diaries are blended with high-quality Super 8 film and low-quality VHS through Stefan Nadelman and Hisko Hulsing’s all-new animation, providing the sort of immersive experience that no number of books or second-hand documentaries could ever match. I was particularly impressed with recurring little touches such as being able to watch Cobain’s handwriting appear on the pages of his journal, or see his manic, polarised art morph into spectacular animated set pieces (the highlights for me being Incesticide’s sick cover coming to life, and [presumably] Francis Bean in utero set to the twisted sound of one of my favourite Nirvana B-sides, “Sappy”).

 

Another strength of the movie is Jeff Danna’s score, which reinterprets and reframes key Nirvana riffs and themes. Most notably, a melodic version of “All Apologies” poignantly underscores Cobain’s merry childhood capers, while haunting renditions of tracks like “Smells Like Teen Spirit” and “Lithium” underscore his angst-ridden teenage years and early experiments with drugs, serving as a prelude for what’s to come. Watching him with a spliff in his bedroom, strumming away on his guitar as a version of “Smells Like Teen Spirit” that sounds like “Eleanor Rigby” broils away ominously in the background, is a little like hearing those telling few bars of “The Imperial March” in Attack of the Clones after Anakin’s confession - it creates an almost tangible sense of inexorability.

 
What warrants the most praise though is not the wider source material or even its spectacular presentation, but Morgen’s incisive cut to the heart of Cobain’s story, which strips away the image of the now almost mythic grunge god to expose a physically and mentally frail – “fragile” is the word that keeps recurring throughout the film - individual, whose professional triumphs flowed from wallowing in insecurities and neuroses that this film lays bare. Indeed, Montage of Heck paints a moving picture of a prodigious but troubled young man who, for the most part, attracts great sympathy despite his never-ending catalogue of poor and selfish choices. Even as he talks of manipulating and stealing from, even taking advantage of, a girl whom his classmates had labelled a “retard”, he speaks with such honesty and dignity that it’s easy to see how he unwittingly - and unwillingly - became the spokesman for a generation.

But as the film progresses, and his life becomes little more than a drug-fuelled orgy with Courtney Love, such poise and candour is harder to find amongst all the silliness and squalor. Particularly as someone who’s had his views on Love coloured by other sources, I was really taken aback by Morgen’s candid portrayal of the skag-addled Cobain in his final year or so of life, which from the clips chosen is hard to reconcile with the loving father depicted in his journals. The press - and indeed the courts, initially - were, quite rightly, quick to chastise Love for her use of heroin whilst pregnant with Francis Bean, but as Montage of Heck creeps towards its inevitable end, it wasn’t so much her that I was silently judging, but the mortal remains of her husband who couldn’t even keep his eyes open long enough to get through his daughter’s haircut. Overall it might have been “six of one and half a dozen of the other,” as my old mam would say, but this film stirred some previously absent sympathy for Cobain’s widow (and not just ’cos she has her tits and/or arse out in most of the home video clips).

Perhaps the greatest praise that I can give to Morgen’s masterpiece though is that, from start to finish, it is a film about the life of Kurt Cobain. Previous films have treated him like Benjamin Button, starting with that legendary death – such a bore - and working their way back from there, whereas Morgen only really dwells on Cobain’s suicide in the final frame, focusing instead on the man as he lived. Bravo.

Whether you are or were a fan of Nirvana or not, this is a film that you have to see, if only to serve as a memento mori like no other; a brutal reminder to us all that it’s definitely better to fade away than burn out.

Cobain: Montage of Heck is available to download from the iTunes Store in 1080p HD for £13.99. It will air tonight on HBO in the USA.

If you’ve watched the film and are wondering who the “interpretative dancer” is in the Reading Festival scenes, check out my old friend Polish* Paul’s interview with him at LeftLion. You may also enjoy his Nottsvana, which tells of how Nottingham helped to shape Nirvana’s success.

* Not even remotely Polish. About as Polish as Phil the Greek is Greek