By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 3 cats
Director: Brett Morgan
Country: united_states
Year: 2015
Running time: 145
IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4229236/combined
Kyle says: “This HBO documentary on 1980s Seattle indie music scene visionary and guiding artistic force behind Nirvana has much to recommend it: childhood videos and drawings that help to explain Cobain’s restless drive, his horror of humiliation and ridicule, his sense of spiritual impotence and his drive for transcendence that led to lifelong thoughts of suicide (prevented initially by his fanatical curiosity about sexual experience), his early alienation from family and friends, his compulsive need for artistic fulfillment, and his mesmeric leadership of Nirvana as ‘the flagship band of Generation X’ on three of the defining musical albums of Seattle’s grunge era: ‘Bleach’ in 1989, ‘Nevermind’ in 1991, and ‘In Utero’ in 1993. But its more than two-hour repetitive length and relentless home movies of Courtney Love and Kurt Cobain, are exhausting, pointing up wasted opportunity in regrettably missing Nirvana footage, and emphasizing a lack of compelling cinematic interest to all but the most devoted Cobain fans.
“Finding a brief version of happiness with wife and fellow grunge rocker Courtney Love and daughter Frances Bean, espousing a frightful aversion to fame and fortune, especially interviews and articles with drug innuendoes and lifestyle denunciations, and endlessly tortured by inner demons as well as his heroin addiction, Kurt Cobain committed suicide at the age of 27 — the same age as Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin. Buzz Osborne of the Melvins, and an avowed longtime friend of Kurt Cobain, is quoted in a June ‘Rolling Stone’ interview saying, ‘People need to understand that 90 percent of MONTAGE OF HECK is bullshit, total bullshit’. That the documentary was made with the cooperation of Love and Cobain family and friends notwithstanding, Osborne also says, ‘That’s the one thing no one gets about Cobain — he was a master of jerking your chain’. Those patient enough to wade through COBAIN: MONTAGE OF HECK have a chance to learn more (or less) about one of the most important musicians of his time. 3 cats
“Seen Sunday, September 6, 2015, on HBO, Time Warner Cable, New York.”