This documentary told me little I didn't already know about the great Kurt Cobain. With supposed access to numerous home videos, journals and members of Kurt's immediate family, friends and band mates, I find it curious the aspects of Kurt's life the director chose to focus on. It is evident that the aim of the documentary is to portray Kurt as a troubled and depressed soul, yet it doesn't provide any real insight into the events that created such a feeling in him. One such oddity is the interview with Kurt's mother which never delved deeper than the surface points of some of the major events of Kurt's life (ones that we've already learned more about from other journalists in years past). For instance: They touch on Kurt's homelessness as a teen, yet don't venture into the circumstances that caused his homelessness or have any depth of discussion about this major point in Kurt's life. How Kurt came to be the man and artist that captivated so many is still as mysterious now as it was before I watched this documentary.

Apart from the documentary's questionable focus and content, the style in which the story is told is well done, with fluid interchanges between Kurt's journal entries, old home videos, photos, sound recordings and interviews. The use of animation helped pull everything together and added a dreamy dimension to the story telling.

All in all an enjoyable, well made film, but an informative and insightful documentary it is not.

An overly long and indulgent disappointment of a rock doc that brings nothing new to the party. Much is left out with gaps filled in by inexplicable meandering 'art'. Be very suspicious of 'officialy sanctioned' films, especially those that miss out key figures, white wash others and look like they were thrown together.

I've been an admirer of Brett Morgen's work for a while, and throughout his films (Kid Stays in the Picture, Chicago 10, 06/17/94), he's constantly displayed a great gift for how to do montages and to expand the form of the documentary, whether it's through voice-over that is (and isn't) right out of a book with corresponding imagery for Robert Evans, or with rotoscoped animation for the trial of the Chicago 7 in the late 60's. So it is logical that if he'd take on a documentary on Kurt Cobain it would be in montage form. The question is is it any good? That of course will depend on how attached you might be to the Cobain "mythos" that has sprouted since (or even before) his death.

I didn't have that kind of attachment - I love the band and like his work as a lyricist and musician, but it stops there - so went in to this fairly fresh and only knowing scattered facts about Cobain (all of them petty and none of them really mentioned here). What made the movie work for me is that Morgen sets up empathy with his subject and the audience very quickly, and it's thanks to a treasure trove of archive material. This director had access to so much 8mm home movie footage, hand-held camcorder video from the early 90's, old Nirvana band tapes, audio cassette recordings that Kurt made as a teenager, even a couple of voicemail messages and conversations (if the movie doesn't make you want to check out Over the Edge, it's doing something wrong).

But most of all are the journal entries, which is where much of the real meat of Morgen's film comes through. You get a complete purview into who Cobain was, from youth up until just near the end, with these journals and they're full of so many words but also drawings - Cobain was an incredible drawer and artist, and maybe in another life could've been a comic book guy with the sensibility of a more deranged Mike Judge or something - so Morgen uses these to his advantage and leaps off from creating animations from these drawings into animations based on Kurt's words. Possibly the highlight of the first half of the movie comes with Cobain's story of being disaffected, smoking pot, and trying to have his first sexual experience with a messed up fat girl, and it's startling to see how these images unfold.

But unlike Chicago 10, the movie's not anchored in this style. Morgen is all over the place at times with his montages, going from behind the scenes footage of music videos to Kurt and Courtney's own home movies. The latter becomes borderline invasive in some way, not too far removed from watching the Tommy Lee/Pamela video from years back, minus the sex (though Courtney Love cant help but show some boob). Perhaps it is necessary to see just what their relationship was like without any media bias; this part is also brought forward with articles that I found fascinating for what could very well have been totally true... or a bunch of BS, and probably the truth was in the middle. They were junkies, they were in love, and the degree to how much they were using colors perceptions for people.

Oh, and the movie is with wall-to-wall Nirvana music, from very deep, obscure, super-early-career cuts from punk shows to Kurt recording the Beatles 'And I Love Her' on a little cassette. Morgen has a natural ability to combine images with rapid succession, but I never really felt lost so long as I was paying attention to what was going on on screen. I saw it on HBO, but now regret I didn't get the full visual-aural experience in a theater, since it seems made for that kind of maximum impact.

I don't even think Montage of Heck gives a 100% clear view of things that happened for Nirvana or in all of Cobain's life, and yet that's kind of fine - it has enough time to go through the major accomplishments, but it doesn't matter the how completely except that he did it, and at that point now what? But by the end of it I felt like I got enough to see the man in a slightly new way. Before my impression of Cobain was of some cooler-than-thou dude who lived the rock and roll lifestyle too fast. In reality, he was a sensitive dude who loved punk rock and skyrocketed much too quickly to fame. Had Nevermind somehow not been so good, one wonder if he'd still be alive - or what else might've taken him down after a childhood of persona non grata status.