Cobain: Montage of Heck (2015)

I think this piece of work being produced by Frances Bean Cobain is the best film I have seen on Kurt yet. It really shows how different he was, how Courtney seemed to be the downfall of it all in my opinion. I love the illustrations along with his recorded audio. Kurt to this day is such an iconic rock star but remains such a mystery. Krist (Nirvana bass player) really gives some intuitive insight too. My only griped is that Dave Grohl (Drummer of Nirvana) was not in interviewed. Kurt was such an influential piece of the grunge sound and really the face of it all. A must watch!

I watched this "documentary" without any preconceived ideas about Cobain and Nirvana. I know their music and about Cobain's death, but I followed their story from a distance. The documentary is unsatisfactory, mostly because of the uneven pace, the length and the feeling that the people involved just tried to justify themselves.The story stars slow, with some sweet (and heartbreaking) footage of baby Kurt, interspersed with interviews with his mother, father and stepmother. I knew little about Cobain's life, but I had the impression the three of them tried to justify their actions even before they mentioned that in his teenage years Kurt was shipped back and forward in his family circle, because he was "difficult". His dad and stepmother looked weird, while his mother looked like an older version of Courtney Love (not a compliment).The story includes animated parts of Kurt's journals, photos, artwork, home movies and even some animated "reconstruction" of moments in Kurt's life.The technique is interesting, but there is way too much of it, especially the animated journal, showing the handwritten words forming very quickly. It is a non-stop struggle trying to read the text. Also, most of Cobain's artwork is quite violent and depressing.When it reaches the point of Cobain living with girlfriend Tracy and then forming Nirvana, the pace of the story changes. Enter Courtney Love and the rest is basically about her. We're shown plenty of home movies, with the allegedly happy couple in various stages of undress, looking filthy and living in squalor. Then more footage with baby Frances, in the same settings and nudity, with an increasingly emaciated Cobain and Love showing her tits. As mentioned by another reviewer, that was totally irrelevant, since I wanted to know Cobain's story and cared nothing about Love's tits.With the hijack of Courtney Love, the story takes a turn for the worse and seems to drag on forever. Love also does a lot of justifying, especially about the notorious Vanity Fair interview. She admits to using heroin while pregnant, as if it is perfectly normal. Dave Grohl is not interviewed, while Novoselic gives a couple of anodyne statements. The end is quite abrupt and leaves out the final weeks. I guess a touchy topic for the widow….Whatever happened, Cobain seemed sensitive, artistic and fragile man, certainly not a happy guy. He had the misfortune of growing up in a chaotic family and falling for the wrong woman. Some say that life is the narrative we tell ourselves about the events that happened to us. Unfortunately Cobain told himself a sad, violent and ultimately tragic story.

Never has there been a more pure, raw, gripping and grotesque documentary as Brett Morgen's Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck. A stirring look into the self destructive life of one of rock and grunge's biggest icons. Interviews from Courtney Love, Kurt's Parents and Siblings, Bass Player Krist Novoselic is seen while archive footage, old comics and drawings, intense imagery flashes onto the screen shocking and giving viewers a hard boiled look into the life of this great rock star.Morgen's visual style is seen from using new footage he directed which follows animated sequences and live action film are amazing. The movie also uses footage of inside the human body, gory comics, disturbing drawings such as Snoopy as a Nazi to show the troubled times that Cobain is going through in a most passionate way. Morgen cares about every single detail and doesn't leave anything out and although it can be tiring at times with it's long 2 hour and 25 minute running time, the film never runs out of steam and is as raw as a music documentary can get. No more History of the Eagles or the four hour epic masterpiece Running Down a Dream, this movie is life like. It breathes, it reproduces, it is crazy.Montage of Heck is one of my favorite movies of 2015, and this movie surely will be nominated for an Oscar. 95/100 A

I generally like the music of Nirvana, but I don't consider myself a fan of the band. Nevertheless, it's impossible to deny the huge influence they had over the music and popular culture. In the early '90s, the "hair metal" had degenerated into an empty spectacle in which the make-up and the fixative spray were more important than music itself. So, Nirvana appeared as an alternative which changed the face of rock and popularized "grunge" movement, lacking of artifice and with a renewed emphasis on the value of music (even though, like any other movement, it eventually became a victim of the same over- merchandising which has suffocated an uncountable number of musical styles). However, like its title indicates, Cobain: Montage of Heck doesn't pretend to deal with the History of grunge and even less of Nirvana, but with the singer, guitarist and composer who became an icon of a generation. This narrow focus definitely intensifies the vision of the documentary... but at the same time, it makes it feel a bit incomplete, omitting part of the historical frame which would seem indispensable to complete the story. On the other hand, director Brett Morgen fulfilled with his mission, deeply digging into Kurt Cobain's past until getting a detailed audiovisual tapestry of his life. Home videos, personal recordings, public interviews and Cobain himself's copious notes integrate with each other into a narrative which is a bit diffuse on its shape, but not less representative of his tortured existence and the traumas (and vices) which probably contributed to his depression and eventual suicide. The result is simultaneously interesting and painful. Maybe too painful. There are passages of the documentary which, in my humble opinion, cross the line of morbidity and feel tremendously uncomfortable. I appreciate the fact that Morgen decided to depict the raw reality behind the legend, but I think he should have invested less time on that. Speaking of which, Cobain: Montage of Heck includes numerous musical interludes accompanied by animations which bring Cobain's writings and diaries to life. These animations might be a bit disturbing (we couldn't expect less in a biography of this artist), and they are always accompanied by songs of Nirvana and other artists. The problem is that I felt them a bit longer than they should; they are visually attractive and they are useful to separate the numerous interviews and "talking heads", but they tend to extend themselves for more than they should, inflating the running time to 145 minutes. Nevertheless, I found Cobain: Montage of Heck an interesting documentary, even though it will definitely have more value to the fans of Cobain's. Besides, this film renewed my respect for Cobain's legacy and generated me unexpected compassion for his tortured spirit (even if part of that torture was self-inflicted).