Saw it via DVR. I’m not a Nirvana guy - fine melodic punk-pop, but I was too old for his Holden Caulfield whiny word salad to reach me deeply.
This documentary is very weird and well done. The director Brett Morgen uses devices like highlighting words in Cobain’s journals and animation to bring the folk-art primitivism that pervaded his music and persona. Warts and all, he was a creative, tragic guy. Courtney Love looks like a plastic surgery socialite now, but is far more insightful than I would’ve thought even while she was discussing awful behavior like doing drugs while pregnant.
Worth seeing - presents him far more holistically vs the pop legend.
I think Courtney Love was more involved than they let on, and/or the director is her lover or something. Thought it was odd Dave Grohl was completely absent, and that the ending seemed like the goal was to put Love in a good light and make it seem like Cobain was the bad influence on her and their daughter and that his goal in life was to be a junky and kill himself. His mom was also really creepy and looked like Courtney Love.
I don’t know if it is fanboy whitewashing, but I remember reading somewhere that Cobain started using heroin because of a very painful medical problem that was not diagnosed correctly or treated correctly.
That seemed very tragic to me, that he wasn’t just using to party but to treat pain.
There is a lot of talk about his “stomach problems” (usually with the quotes)… I happen to be reading a couple books about him now, too. A lot of mentions of his “stomach problems” with some of his peers implying it was caused by the heroin and others saying the opposite. I think his journals say that he used a total of 10 times between 1987-1990 and he saw it as medicating himself.
I read the Rolling Stone article about the film. The article said there was very little input from Love, but a lot from daughter Frances. Could be that she didn’t want to make her mom look bad. Or Morgen didn’t want to make Love look bad for Frances’ sake.
As for Dave Grohl, he didn’t get interviewed until after most of the film was done and Morgen didn’t want to “shove him in there.” So an interview with Grohl does exist it just didn’t fit. No doubt it seems like a glaring omission tho.
Not much to add though I did think it was very well done overall and I loved the arthouse feel with all the little splashes of animation and random musings of Cobain thrown in and such and I did feel like I was transported in a way back to the 90’s.
There are multiple references to stomach problems, but they are as part of quotes and journal entries. No dot-connecting with drug use or attempts at exploring.
Upon reflection, I want to add these two observations:
Kurt Cobain had the perfect punk voice for commercial success. With sincere respect and as a compliment, he has the Elvis of punk voices: his ballad/fuller-voiced singing has a wonderful sound and emotional quaver; his punk yawp sounds like a perfect scorching tangle of emotions - and he sang and screeched in tune! Hearing his voice on these never-released tapes and isolated mixes really made the fact of his perfect voice jump out again. Jeez - just listen to it. He can (almost literally) sing the phone book and make you say “he understands.”
His guitar work is really great. He plays with an almost AC/DC rhythmic approach. He tends to play riffs on only a couple of strings, like the A and D or D and G - the ones in the middle. By isolating those strings you really hear the beats between the notes - like Malcolm Young playing Girls Got Rhythm or What’s Next to the Moon. Simple - and because his strum has such a great groove, his simple chords really keep the groove out front.
It’s nice to be reminded of how good he was in a fresh way. I’ve had Cobain-fatigue for so long, it is easy to walk past the reasons his music has become sonic wallpaper in our culture. The sound of Cobain and Nirvana is really good.
Grohl isn’t completely absent and he is “thanked” a couple of times in the credits. That said I too was surprised that he wasn’t asked to contribute more given the material he seems to have based on his own HBO series.
It is well worth watching and maybe even owning as “montage” is exactly the word for it… I could watch it multiple times.
I think that I had seen his mother interviewed before but never his father or step mother. Also his girlfriend
No cite, but I remember reading somewhere that he had Chron’s disease. I don’t know if that’s true, but my wife has Chron’s, and if he did have a severe case of it I could see that being the reason for his drug use and suicide (not pronouncing judgements, just saying it’s that bad of a thing to go through). It’s a bowel/intestinal infection with inflamation that can spread through your digestive system and kill you (depending on the severity/progression of the disease). It becomes painful to eat most food, and you can’t take Ibuprofen or Naproxen for the pain, only Tynetol, which doesn’t work. Severe weight loss is common.
There are treatments for it which can help (but not cure) it, I see them on television commercials all the time. But I don’t know how recently these are or if they would have helped (if that’s indeed what he had, also not everyone responds to treatments). And if you progress to the last stage it can be fatal, treatments or not.
This is the first I’ve ever heard of it being on Netflix…it’s still on HBO’s online streaming service only, as far as I know. I have doubts about it being on Netflix anytime soon.
I saw this a few days ago, and really enjoyed the artwork, cartoon, music video clips, archive footage and interviews. Some of the interviews, particularly with Kurt’s mother, did come across a little as ‘the victor/survivor (re)writes the history’. Either that or they were just not very insightful, honest people. There’s another movie coming out soon, called Soaked in Bleach, which is about the investigation into his death. It apparently centers on some conspiracy-woo but might make for good viewing.
The stomach problem came up in his diary/writing so much I could only think that it was really true, or psychosomatic of other mental health issues he had.