Courtney Love and Kurt Cobain
Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck DIRECTED BY Brett Morgen NOT RATED, 2 HRS., 12 MINS.
DOR A HANDEL /CORBIS/HBO
By Chris Nashawaty
I
N THE OPENING moments of Brett Morgen’s devastatingly intimate documentary Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck, there’s a series of Super-8 home movies narrated by the late Nirvana frontman’s mother. “I was head over heels in love with that child,” she says as the flickering image of a towhead with bright blue eyes and an even brighter smile waves at the camera. On a hissing old tape recording, she asks her toddler son who he is. And in the tiniest, helium-pitched voice, he replies, “I’m Kurt Cobain!” It just about breaks your heart. Could the live-fast-die-young god of grunge ever have been so sweet and innocent? It’s been more than two decades since Cobain was found dead at age 27, the victim of a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head—the intimations of which could be found in his
May 1, 2015
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