By Robert Scucci
| Published
Kurt Cobain’s life and legacy is the stuff of legend, and the multitude of authorized and unauthorized documentaries floating around these days only makes his lore all the more confusing. Aiming to unpack the genius behind Nirvana, Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck may very well be one of the most intimate explorations of who many Gen Xers consider to be the voice of their generation.
Using Cobain’s journal musings, artwork, and interviews from his friends and family in an attempt to humanize the rock star in a palatable way, Montage of Heck is brilliantly composed, features stunning animated sequences that bring his often troubled thoughts to life, and, for the first time, shows the world that he was just a regular guy who found himself overwhelmed by the fame and adoration that ultimately led to him taking his own life as a means to escape the world he built for himself.
However, I would hardly call Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck a definitive look at the grunge icon’s success and struggles because there are a lot of key elements missing from his story that may disappoint some Nirvana fans.
Blurring Fact And Fiction
Using Kurt Cobain’s own written words as a form of supplementary narration, Montage of Heck brings his personal journals to life through brilliantly animated sequences describing his upbringing that are supplemented by interviews with Nirvana bassist Krist Novoselic, Courtney Love, and his parents, Wendy Elizabeth and Donald Leland Cobain, among others. Through these sequences, we learn about Cobain’s abandonment issues that stemmed from his parent’s divorce, resulting in him being shuffled to and from various households during his formative years.
While these scenes in Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck evoke sympathy for obvious reasons, filmmaker Brett Morgan took a few creative liberties with Cobain’s journal entries, which have since been called out by Melvins’ singer Buzz Osbourne and Nirvana’s own Krist Novoselic as total fabrications.
Defending himself from these accusations, Morgan has gone on record stating that he specifically wanted to focus on Kurt Cobain’s art to bring Montage of Heck to life. Acknowledging that Cobain was always spinning yarns, he admits that the story about the rock icon’s first sexual encounter, for example, was likely a fabrication, but still committed to paper by Cobain as a means to cope with whatever kind of loneliness he was dealing with at that point in his life.
That is to say, while Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck uses a ton of Cobain’s personal musings to provide more insight into the guy’s mental state throughout various phases of his life and career, it doesn’t necessarily mean that everything he said was 100 percent true, and should instead be interpreted as yet another art piece outside of his music and paintings.
Glosses Over The Wholesome Stuff In Troubling Ways
Any Nirvana fan will be the first to admit that Kurt Cobain was a hopeless junkie who never got over his parent’s divorce, which is found throughout a healthy amount of his lyrical content with Nirvana. But between the times when his addiction took hold, there were also stories about how funny, compassionate, sensitive, and caring he was when he was in his element that aren’t captured in Montage of Heck. When Courtney Love is brought in to talk about their volatile relationship, this notion of wholesomeness is put on the backburner, as Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck shifts focus to his debilitating heroin addiction instead of the moments when he was actually trying to be a good father despite his troubled upbringing because he always wanted to have a family of his own.
A Bag Of Contradictions
What’s more, the concert footage from various eras of Nirvana’s career show an absolute force of nature putting on electrifying performances that no person in the height of their addiction could pull off on their best day, resulting in a confusing narrative. There’s no way to deny that Kurt Cobain’s drug issues ultimately led to his downfall and suicide, but there were stretches of clarity in his life that suggest he wasn’t always an absolute mess of a human being to be around, which are further explored in written biographies like Charles R. Cross’ Heavier Than Heaven.
If Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck loses points for anything, it’s this juxtaposition of personalities that are incredibly difficult to unpack, especially when you consider that much of Cobain’s writings that were used to supplement the documentary are likely works of fiction, or, at the very least rooted in some kernel of truth before being embellished for dramatic effect. I really would have loved to see some more of the home movies that showed a somewhat stable family life during the good times instead of the footage we got, which shows Cobain nodding off while holding his daughter when his wife was cutting her hair.
By the same token, I fully understand that Cobain wasn’t your average person because every single aspect of his life has been elevated to mythological status, and I can only imagine how difficult it must be to wade through his archives with the intent of telling a concise story. The overwhelming focus on the dark side of his life, however, doesn’t do Montage of Heck any favors.
Not Definitive But Still Worthwhile
My favorite part about Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck is the concert footage, which is mixed and remastered to perfection, and restored to such a high definition that it looks like the footage was filmed somewhat recently. What’s more, the updated mixes do an excellent job highlighting Krist Novoselic’s bass contributions to the band in ways that some of the grainy footage floating around online always fails to deliver. Mixed with shots of Cobain’s diary that describes in great detail how he thought a band should operate if they want to be successful, I felt like I caught a good glimpse of how Cobain’s mind operated through a series of contradictions– he wanted to be a famous rock star, and worked relentlessly toward that end, but he hated all of the baggage that came along with it.
Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck is hardly the be-all-end-all of rockumentaries in the sense that it views Cobain’s life through a somewhat narrow lens. But as a supplementary piece to add to his lore, I’d be hard-pressed to say that it isn’t worth your time because despite its limitations, it’s still quite revealing.
As of this writing, you can stream Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck on Max.
