“Kurt had to be born. It was a must,” declares Wendy O’Connor at the beginning of Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck, accompanied by a lullaby version of Nirvana’s “All Apologies” ominously plinked out on xylophone. Cobain’s mother’s words are a mission statement for the film as documentary filmmaker Brett Morgen begins his deconstruction of this grunge rock myth. Morgen pieces together Kurt Cobain’s life, and creates a true vision of this tortured soul. Each sequence is run through with brokenness layered upon brokenness to create an honestly brutal montage of life. It plays like the darker, more angst-fraught underbelly of Richard Linklater’s Boyhood.
Eight years ago, Courtney Love and Francis Cobain approached Morgen to create the official documentary of Nirvana’s lead singer and guitarist. Morgen was then given access to a storage unit full of Kurt’s long-forgotten personal art, which ranged from paintings, sketches, stacks of personal journals, to cassettes of never-heard recordings and home video footage. With this trove of the grunge-rock god’s treasure, he set out to create a film that did justice to Cobain as a human being. He had no interest in bolstering the mythos that heavily shrouds Cobain. Fragments of Nirvana concert footage, interviews, articles, recent family interviews, and animated sequences based on Cobain’s personal narration bind the fragmented work together, revealing the substance of the man.
As its title suggests, the film is essentially a montage of Cobain’s life. It immerses viewers into a headspace of the most intimately psychic, mental, and spiritual kind. It’s as personal a film as I’ve ever seen. Journal entries (often animated) chronicle his first (darkly harrowing) sexual encounter, frequent heroin abuse as self-medication, and his disdain of the quintessential American male. Intimate Super 8 home video footage of Cobain, Love, and Frances’ manic yet sensitive and loving home life is shown. And all the while, Morgen uses every frame to press the viewer into Cobain’s person.
The film made me feel like I was invading Cobain’s suffering, though I also sensed an existential camaraderie between us. I was uncomfortable, horrified, sympathetic, and broken. This rock doc is not about Nirvana. It’s not about fame nor music. Morgen could’ve sainted Cobain and manipulated his image to follow the myth. But instead this is the story – the montage – of a broken child denied love, rejected for his idiosyncrasies, pushed out of any domestic bliss. Nirvana dominated the Billboard charts at the time and became symbolic of a generation. Montage of Heck depicts the figurehead as a man crying out for love.
Like a cinematic séance, Morgen recalls Cobain from the afterlife. It’s as if Kurt Cobain tells his story himself. The enigmatic artist even haunts those who were closest to him as they look back in lamentation. Nirvana’s bassist Krist Novoselic mourns in interview footage early in the film that “it was all there in the music.” Cobain revealed himself to everyone all along, but instead of being understood, he was exploited. It’s a tragedy that though many related to him at that time through his music, none really knew him.
Most of my life I have steered clear of Nirvana’s music. Cobain was not my idol, because honestly, I have always been a bit terrified of his story and music. But now, just a year younger than Cobain was when he left this world, his story is revelatory. In crafting this intimate mosaic, Morgen shows Cobain’s experience as true to all of human existence. None of us are saint or angel. We are all somewhere in that muddy middle, the existential sinkhole of sin, darkness, neglect, and brokenness with our hands ever-reaching toward some bit of light.
Kurt Cobain was a complicated man, battered by life though loving nonetheless. Home videos show him interacting with his wife Courtney Love and daughter Frances Cobain, who survive him. It’s telling that they would want this film made. They knew him. They loved him, and he loved them. Montage of Heck reveals a sad and faint glimmer of life amidst dense bleakness. Cobain was growling through the darkness for love, and his story demands empathy. We all are like Kurt Cobain: broken, battered, insecure, and often raging through life. The truth was there all along in his words, the very ones omitted from that soft, peaceful lullaby: “All in all is all we are.”