Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck (2015) Review

 

Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck (2015)

Montage of Heck is a deep dive into the life, mind, and death of Nirvana lead singer, Kurt Cobain.

This HBO documentary, now a few years past my Nirvana listening prime, is still in my opinion one of the best musical documentaries ever because it dives deep into who Kurt was, how he thought, and what a troubled life he lived. What makes this particularly special is that it borrows from hours of recordings, home videos, notebooks, and interviews with those closest to him. So much is said in his journal entries and drawings, which anchor much of what we see on screen to display the mood and headspace he was in during any given time. He was a tormented individual who wanted fame early on, but upon receiving it wanted nothing more than to get away.

The documentary itself reveals a lot about the singer, going into great detail on his checkered youth (something that made him extremely relatable to newer generations), life in Washington, and the meteoric rise that Nirvana saw, plunging into success almost overnight with the release of Nevermind. They also quite heavily focused on the relationship between Kurt and Courtney Love and the rock power couples struggles with heroin addiction in the middle of Courtney being pregnant with their daughter.

I also really liked how in the background of all of these home videos or drawings, is the utilization of Nirvana’s music, which was left intact or changed up to fit certain moods for certain chapters of his life.
We also get interviews from a lot of those closest to Kurt, including Courtney Love, Krist Novosellic, as well as interviews with his family and friends. They were all very open about him and his struggles, with nothing ever seeming glorified out of remembrance, which is important in such a documentary.

Montage of Heck, directed by Brett Morgan, is an honest, powerful, and damning documentary that highlights Kurt Cobain’s struggled with drugs, suicide, and rejection from the world. It was those struggled though that made him unbelievably human and the face and voice for an entire generation of the 90s.

9.6/10