Among its other dangers, nostalgia is toxic because it warps our memories of the thing we’re commemorating. Sanding down the rough edges, reducing complexity to platitudes, nostalgia causes us to intensify our affection while impairing our judgment. For anyone in thrall to the music of Nirvana, this problem is only amplified. It’s not ridiculous to say that, over the span of three studio albums, the Aberdeen, Washington band changed the direction of popular music generally and rock ‘n’ roll specifically—but it sure sounds ridiculous. Twenty years removed from frontman Kurt Cobain’s suicide, the musical landscape looks completely different than it did when the trio dropped Nevermind in 1991. So how do those who were there articulate to those who weren’t what it was like?
Despite its limitations, the documentary Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck is an honorable attempt to restore the gunk, anger and volume to the band’s legacy—and to Cobain’s as well. Dead at 27—the same age when Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison died—the songwriter-guitarist is remembered as a talented, troubled stalwart, but The Kid Stays in the Picture director Brett Morgen wants us to look closer at Cobain, and what Montage of Heck reveals isn’t all that pretty. A junkie, a pain in the ass, an inveterate malcontent: This is the Cobain we see in Morgen’s documentary. Yet, by emphasizing the messy, ugly humanness of his subject, Morgen manages to make him heroic and tragic, too. Though Montage of Heck is undoubtedly geared to fans, it gives fans reason to be grateful for this guy and this band all over again.
As described in Paste’s interview with Morgen, Montage of Heck is sanctioned by Cobain’s estate: His daughter Frances Bean Cobain serves as an executive producer, and his widow Courtney Love is one of the film’s interview subjects. Opening up the vaults doesn’t necessarily provide fresh insights into Cobain—if you own, say, Journals or the inexhaustibly amusing concert video Live! Tonight! Sold Out!, you’ve seen some of these curios already. But what Morgen does is provide a public service that’s similar to the work he did on his fine ESPN “30 for 30” documentary June 17th, 1994, which told the story of O.J. Simpson’s infamous Bronco chase entirely through sports coverage from that fateful day. Likewise, by offering a fresh perspective, Montage of Heck makes the familiar feel new, and in Cobain’s case, that means shoving the man’s loud, rude, desperate energy in our faces—even to the point where perhaps we’ve had enough of him. One suspects that’s Morgen’s point. Nirvana cut deeper than its peers not just because of Cobain’s hooks but because of his genuine rage and confusion; the hooks made his unmistakable animosity palatable, and relatable.
Montage of Heck avoids the typical music biography course, never highlighting the artist’s career peaks, or relating stories of how this song was written or how those two band members first met, and instead offers an intuitive causation from one event to the next. We see Cobain as a happy, energetic boy whose parents’ divorce seems to have permanently soured his spirit, leaving him searching for some sort of family stability throughout the rest of his life. Cobain’s mother, sister and former girlfriend don’t deliver a lot of ah-ha insights into the man’s creativity because Morgen doesn’t seem interested. The director is trying to create an emotional sketch of Cobain, as if the artist’s inner life can only be guessed at, never fully comprehended.
That approach doesn’t always work. As with The Kid Stays in the Picture, which he co-directed with Nanette Burstein, Morgen has his cutesy moments, marrying animation to Cobain’s audio recordings, for example, or pairing the band’s “School” with the artist’s complaints about his younger years. But the occasional bum note is mitigated by the director’s fairly nervy approach to retelling Cobain’s story.