Film

Kurt Cobain: About a Son

Josh Bell

Kurt Cobain: About a Son

** 1/2

Directed by AJ Schnack

Not rated

Opens Friday

Elements you will not find in the experimental documentary Kurt Cobain About a Son include: any of Cobain’s music; footage of him or his band, Nirvana, doing anything; interviews with his friends, family, associates or anyone connected with Cobain or Nirvana; any documents or photographs relevant to the time period and events covered by the film, at least until just before the closing credits. What you will get are essentially two things: Cobain’s unadorned voice, culled from hours of tapes recorded by journalist Michael Azerrad for his 1993 book Come As You Are: The Story of Nirvana; and a series of impressionistic images of Cobain’s native Pacific Northwest, created by Schnack as a vague thematic counterpoint.

While Schnack creates an often beautiful photo essay on life in Seattle and its environs, his images add little to the words we hear Cobain speaking, and only underscore the frustration in our inability to get a full sense of what’s being discussed. When Cobain talks about the joy of playing club shows in Nirvana’s early days, we don’t see video or photographs of the band doing just that—instead we get some nameless musicians, artfully shot but signifying nothing.

Throughout the film there is a maddening lack of context—Cobain’s name is never mentioned (not even in an opening title), and events in the band’s career and Cobain’s life are glossed over or omitted. At the same time, a lot of what Cobain says is fascinating, and the intimate interviews are touching and sad. If only they’d been used as the basis for a real story.

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