Everything you could ever want to learn about Kurt Cobain, probably, ranging from his youth spent pinballing between different homes, the seemingly overnight ascension to grunge godhood, and his ever-increasing flirtation with self-destruction. Whatever your thoughts on Courtney Love may currently be, the home-video footage here will most likely intensify them by 3 zillion percent. Director Brett Morgan—whose occasionally animated, hellzapoppin style brilliantly brought the oversized personality behind
The Kid Stays in the Picture to life—finds himself on shakier ground here, with a subject who openly derided any attempt at outsider analysis. For someone not already intensely familiar with Nirvana, that central opaqueness may well make this film come across as both overlong (Morgen was given access to thousands of Cobain’s loose-leaf journal entries and doodles, and it sometimes seems like he’s bent on presenting every single one) and frequently shapeless. Miraculously, though, by the time this exhaustive/exhausting film comes to his final legendary unplugged performance, its chaotic scrapbook approach nevertheless somehow feels like the best way to capture the essence of its visionary, frustrating subject.
By
Andrew Wright