An uncomfortably close look at the private life of Kurt Cobain, short-term rock superstar and unwilling voice of a disgruntled generation. In the decades since his untimely suicide, Cobain's become an almost mythical figure, which isn't to say he was anything less at the height of his mid-90s popularity. To that end, it can be useful to ground his legacy in this way: intimate home video footage shows him unguarded behind closed doors, but also captures his steady state of mental decay. Where there's a gap in his video history between childhood (and it's heartbreaking to watch this happy little boy, knowing what tragedies his life held in store) and early adulthood, journal entries, artwork and beautiful animated segments keep the narrative moving. Clearly he was hanging on by a thread for longer than most could manage, pushed into a pit of despair by a bleak combination of abandonment, physical frailty, intense media scrutiny and constant, desperate drug abuse. It's not the Cobain many of us might want to see, or to believe in, but it feels so close to the truth that I could almost feel his breath on me. As an extreme close-up on one of my era's biggest names it's significant, with a killer soundtrack of course, and unexpectedly real. It frequently feels invasive, though, especially in the interviews with his parents (his stepmother's continuous, awkward smile is particularly unnerving) and I'm not sure I'm totally okay with the way it made me feel. Powerful in many good, and many bad, ways.
Review of Cobain: Montage of Heck
