Kurt Cobain: About a Son

A muddled disaster of a documentary that could have been quite interesting. The film utilized apparently hours of recorded conversations with Kurt and someone writing a book about him (the film never explains who it is and I don't care enough to look it up). It's shocking and refreshing to hear his voice again after all these years, especially not singing. And although the conversations are wide ranging and intimate, there is little here that is really new or interesting. That might, in part, point to the conclusion that maybe Cobain wasn't that interesting. He seems self-absorbed and pretentious here. This technique could have worked, however, if the materials were given to the right direction. It made me think of "This is Elvis' which the King narrated from beyond the grave. That film mixed the audio with footage of Elvis. But here, the director chooses to show us hours of b-roll footage of what could be a really bad tourism video for the Pacific Northwest. Occaisionally the images have some relation to what Kurt is talking about, but often they don't. More irritating is that Kurt's voice over often goes away for long musical interludes... but none of it is Nirvana music. It's a slow, unengaging film about a very interesting subject. Boo.