Directed by: Brett Morgen.
Written by: Brett Morgen
Part of the reason why
Morgen’s documentary is better than all the rest is that it is the first one “authorized”
by Cobain’s family (his daughter, Frances Bean, is one of the executive
producers). This gives Morgen access to countless journals, home movies, sound
recordings (including the strange ones that given the movie its name), and
interviews with people who knew Cobain from his birth to his death. Making an
authorized documentary comes with its own pitfalls as well though – as often
the family wants to “protect” the legacy of the deceased, so we end up with a
sanitized version of the story (which is why, say, we have yet to get any
cinematic works worthy of Jimi Hendrix, other than the concert footage itself).
But Cobain’s family apparently didn’t interfere – didn’t have final say in what
Morgen included and excluded in the film. They handed over the treasure trove
of material, and let Morgen do with it what he wanted. The result is a
fascinating, tragic, funny, heartbreaking doc that doesn’t do either of the
things that normally sink music documentaries – put Cobain on a pedestal of
genius, nor drag him through the mud. It’s a warts and all documentary to be
sure, never shying away from the negative aspects of Cobain’s character, but it
places them in context with his childhood, and ends up with a vivid,
sympathetic portrait of the man. When she saw the documentary for the first
time, apparently Frances Bean Cobain told Morgen that he “made the movie I wanted
to see”.
Montage of Heck is a “birth-to-death”
– documentary, starting with home movie footage of a young Cobain, as a
hyper-active, blonde headed moppet, who according his mother “everyone loved”.
Cobain was always a sensitive – perhaps over-sensitive- child, and his parents’
divorce when he was 9 greatly affected him. He was on Ritalin, or something
like it, and was uncontrollable. He spent years being shunted back and forth
between his parents, various aunts, uncles and grandparents – none of whom
could control him at all, and all of whom he eventually wore out. He wanted
desperately to belong to a family – and never could. As a teenager, he drifted
into drugs and alcohol, and eventually found his way into music. The rest is
history.
Morgen has always been a
talented director – his best film may well be his 30 for 30 Episode, June 17,
1994 – which used montage to connect a chaotic day in the world of sports, as
the New York Rangers had a Stanley Cup Parade, the New York Knicks were
collapsing in the playoffs (again), there was World Cup Soccer, a big baseball
game – oh, and it’s the same day O.J. Simpson went on his white bronco ride.
Morgen used no narration in that doc, he simply cut back and forth between all
these events – as if one was channel surfing between them – to give us a
devastating portrait of the highs and lows of sports, and a damning portrait of
the media. Morgen’s strategy in Montage of Heck is similar – yes, the movie
does have a series of interviews, and is made up of mostly archival footage,
but it’s the way Morgen edits it together than makes the film unique.
In a way, it helps Morgen
that Cobain’s life has been as documented as it has been – that there are
already so many biographies and documentaries about Cobain – his life, his
music, his marriage to Courtney Love and his death. Anyone with the slightest
bit of interest in Cobain already knows his story. This frees Morgen up to do
something different with Cobain in this documentary – one that isn’t interested
in the “facts” of what happened, but rather to give the audience a peak into
the mind of Cobain. Having all the material at his disposal, Morgen cuts between
diary passages read aloud, or simply showing the many (many) pages that Cobain
obsessively wrote or drew on, splicing them together with animated sequences,
some of which are like Cobain’s drawing come to life, some are passages from
his life. Nirvana’s music plays almost constantly throughout the movie – but Morgen
always seems to choose not just the perfect song at the perfect time, but the
perfect version of it. All Apologies as a childhood tune you might expect out
of a music box, a children’s choir singing Smells Like Teen Spirit over the
chaotic (and iconic) music video. It is said early in the film that Cobain’s “mind
never stopped working” – even when he was seemingly doing nothing, he was
creating something in his head. Montage of Heck plays like that – a never
ending swirl of creativity that never stops pouring out of the screen at the
audience.
The movie is both
exhilarating and tragic – exhilarating to see, more than ever before, just what
went into Cobain making his music, and tragic because from the beginning, we
know how it will end. You may well get choked up – as I did – in the early
scenes where interviews about Cobain being shunted between family members gives
way to Nirvana’s “Something in the Way” – which is how he saw himself. You may
well get choked up again, as I did, - in later scenes where we see Cobain and
Love with their daughter – and Cobain is clearly stoned as he holds her. It’s
clear he loved his daughter – and he may well have wanted to stop drugs – but he
simply couldn’t. The home movies of Kurt and Courtney – both before and after
Frances’ birth – show a different side to the couple. Yes, at times, it feels
like an excerpt from Sid & Nancy, as two stoned people don’t quite know how
ridiculous they look, but there is also a jokey, playfulness between them –
which goes against the usual narrative we hear about how, near the end, they
were at each other’s throats. Morgen wisely steers clear of most of the tabloid
stuff in the film – he doesn’t shy away from the infamous Vanity Fair article
that so upset Kurt (but was probably accurate), or how Cobain and Love were portrayed
in the media. Bur Morgen also doesn’t delve into the supposed martial problems –
doesn’t push Love in the interview to reveal too much. Cobain’s eventual
suicide is also not touch upon – simply told to us via an end credits card.
None of the interview subjects talk directly about the suicide either – but in
a way, that’s all they talk about for the rest of the movie, simply using other
words. These “omissions” from the movie that hurt it – but rather keeps the
movie on course.
At 145 minutes, Montage of
Heck is perhaps too long – you start to feel its length in the last half hour
or so, especially since Morgen’s style is so visually stimulating, that it
eventually becomes tiring. But that’s the only quibble I have with this
documentary – one of the best of the year to be sure – that shows us the tragic
life of Cobain. Often times, it seems trite in films when they try to tie
everything that happened to the adult to what happened to them as a child – the
washing scene at the beginning of Scorsese’s The Aviator is the weakest part of
the movie for example, or the tragedies in the early life of Ray Charles or
Johnny Cash in Ray or Walk the Line – but here, Morgen makes it sticks. Partly,
that’s because he spends more time in Cobain’s childhood than most do, and
partly, I think, it’s because Cobain died so young (27) that he never really
had time to get over his childhood issues. He was the rejected son who became a
rock star too young, and then drifted off into drug abuse and died before he
dealt with what happened in the past. That’s Cobain’s tragedy – and at the
heart of this brilliant documentary.
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