An uncomfortably close look at the private life of Kurt Cobain, short-term rock superstar and unwilling voice of a disgruntled generation.

In the decades since his untimely suicide, Cobain's become an almost mythical figure, which isn't to say he was anything less at the height of his mid-90s popularity. To that end, it can be useful to ground his legacy in this way: intimate home video footage shows him unguarded behind closed doors, but also captures his steady state of mental decay. Where there's a gap in his video history between childhood (and it's heartbreaking to watch this happy little boy, knowing what tragedies his life held in store) and early adulthood, journal entries, artwork and beautiful animated segments keep the narrative moving. Clearly he was hanging on by a thread for longer than most could manage, pushed into a pit of despair by a bleak combination of abandonment, physical frailty, intense media scrutiny and constant, desperate drug abuse. It's not the Cobain many of us might want to see, or to believe in, but it feels so close to the truth that I could almost feel his breath on me.

As an extreme close-up on one of my era's biggest names it's significant, with a killer soundtrack of course, and unexpectedly powerful. It frequently feels invasive, though, especially in the interviews with his parents (his stepmother's continuous, awkward smile is particularly unnerving) and I'm not sure I'm totally okay with the way it made me feel. Powerful in many good, and many bad, ways.

This is at its best when Morgen puts the viewer in Cobain's shoes. The second half of this documentary is excellent, there's very little handholding and I love how impressionistic/experimental it gets at points. It's so interesting to see the contrast between the biggest rockstar in the world who just released Nevermind and the shitty, depressing apartment he lived in. It certainly doesn't hold back either, you'll get to see his problematic side during that time. The home videos with Courtney, heroin use and death threats made to a music journalist are tough to watch. The presentation is fantastic; I loved the use of atmospheric animation, journal entries, magazine entries and Nirvana songs throughout the film (little odd to leave out his suicide note, however). You can tell they put a lot of thought into the visuals, even the footage recorded with 80s home recorders looks surprisingly polished. I wasn't as much into the first half, mostly because it's not as focussed on Kurt's perspective and therefore less interesting. I honestly could've done without most of the interviews, some of that stuff feels too sanitized. The picture that's painted of Nirvana's come-up in the music industry can come across as a little generic, it's the type of story we've seen in so many rock biopics. You need some of that in order to understand Kurt's character, but much like Nirvana's career, it only really gets going once Nevermind is released.

7/10