Cobain: Montage Of Heck Blu-ray Review

Director: Brett Morgen

Featuring: Kurt Cobain, Frances Bean Cobain, Krist Novoselic, Courtney Love, Don Cobain

Run Time: 132 minutes

Certificate: 15

Extras: Don Cobain interview, Director Interview

As raucous, complex, uncomfortable, brilliant, astonishing and unique as Kurt Cobain was, so is COBAIN: MONTAGE OF HECK. Meshed exceptionally together by writer, producer and director Brett Morgen, the documentary features interviews with the likes of Krist Novoselic and Courtney Love, alongside intriguing insights with his sister Kim Cobain, and his mother and father; Wendy O’Connor and Don Cobain respectively. Morgen’s reportedly spent 8 years pulling it all into one distinctive package as it blends home movies, distinctive animation scenes (juxtaposed with Kurt’s recorded sound bites) and mountains of ideas, words and pictures from his own personal archive.

The Nirvana front man was a contemporary genius and we’re shown that even from an early age, it was clear he had far too much going on his head. Afflicted with hypersensitivity, or ADHD as some might call a version of it now, he was a happy young child but his parents were never really connected. Once they divorced, he was thrown around between family members and never found his life balance as he struggled to attach himself to a place in the world around him or the so-called normal life we’re all told exists.

I don’t think there’s been a band like Nirvana since his death and can’t rationally consider any other group who had such a huge impact in a short timeframe, and we’re talking bands that affect both the mind and culture around them. He killed himself just as I hit my middle teens and although the likes of Oasis and Pulp filled my younger years, Nirvana were, and have always been, one to look up to and the sheer raw spirit and talent of Kurt embodies that sentiment.

COBAIN: MONTAGE OF HECK manages to carry all the elements and aspects of his life, right through his troubled teenage years and into the early days when he discovered the escapism of music. An outsider at school, he struggled to comprehend and connect with the real world and the ‘phonies’ within it. What’s interesting from the outside is that some might say that his cult status and opinions were unusual or rare but that’s a perverse false reality. His music, his power and intensity only grew from extreme personal anxiety into something truly global and Nirvana’s success then, and now, only goes to prove his worldly worth.

Morgen has fashioned a wonderful tribute to a true icon, but also managed to drag out the truth from all sides without making it celebrity, something that Kurt would have hated. If you felt you knew him through the music, journals and stories, you certainly get a multi-layered, unadulterated insight with Montage of Heck and it comes across as both haunting and superbly intoxicating.

[usr=5] COBAIN: MONTAGE OF HECK is available via Digital Download now, and available to buy on Blu-ray and DVD from 27th April. 

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