Cobain: Montage of Heck
Cobain: Montage of Heck
NR | 24 April 2015 (USA)
Cobain: Montage of Heck Trailers

Hailed as one of the most innovative and intimate documentaries of all time, experience Kurt Cobain like never before in the only ever fully authorized portrait of the famed music icon. Academy Award nominated filmmaker Brett Morgen expertly blends Cobain's personal archive of art, music, never seen before movies, animation and revelatory interviews from his family and closest friends.

Reviews
Hellen

I like the storyline of this show,it attract me so much

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InformationRap

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

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Invaderbank

The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

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Josephina

Great story, amazing characters, superb action, enthralling cinematography. Yes, this is something I am glad I spent money on.

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Dan1863Sickles

I almost never believe the hype about movies like this. But this Kurt Cobain documentary really is as brilliant and innovative as everyone says that it is. I've never seen anything like it!The moment the story starts, it seems real and fresh. Hearing the Everly Brothers and seeing Cobain home movies of Aberdeen in the early Sixties captured a mood, a moment of promise. It seemed like a miracle was going to happen. And Kurt Cobain was that miracle. I loved the way the story began with such hope, and the way the notebooks and paintings Kurt Cobain compiled came to life. The energy and excitement that is entirely missing from Gus Van San't exercise in slumming necrophilia, LAST DAYS, was really crackling all around in the middle part of this movie. I could have done without some of the animated story sequences, though. Having a "generic" teenage Kurt bragging about hooking up with a mentally challenged girl, just seemed sort of heavy handed and obvious. This was a guy who would tell any lie just to make the world he came from seem even more disgusting than it really was. But the sequences where he's compiling lists of band names, lists of great punk rock tracks, and lists of "things the band needs to do" were not only illuminating, they were inspiring. The last half hour was pretty depressing. Whereas in the early scenes the Cobain family are frank, modest, and courageous, the people from Kurt's famous period are obviously covering their own behinds and revealing just what they want to reveal. The home movies of Kurt, Courtney, and the baby were touching, in a way, but on some level I think they were staged. (That'll cost me some helpful votes, but I just can't help saying what I feel! And this movie made me feel a lot of things.)This is certainly the best documentary I've ever seen about a rock star. There probably won't be many more, either.

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MisterWhiplash

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.

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Tarek Abdel Aziz

This movie suffers from misleading advertising. This is NOT the definitive documentary. If you were looking for a story about Nirvana, the songs or the rock stardom then you will be heavily disappointed. I think this is a story about Family, Parenthood and Addiction. The tragedy of 2 generations in the same family that were cursed with dysfunctional relationships, selfishness, irresponsibility, self-destructiveness and of course addiction. Kurt was abandoned as a child, and he was tossed around between his parents and other family members, because as they themselves put it in blaming each other "couldn't handle him". And then there is Courtney and Kurt the married couple, the parents, the addicts, and the damage they could have inflicted on their baby. I used to think that Cobain killed himself because of what was happening with the music, and the stardom that he never desired, but after seeing this movie, I am more inclined to think that he was torn between his love for his child, his yearning for building a family that didn't resemble the one he had as a child, and his inability to raise her, mainly due to his addiction -some of the footage was immensely disturbing- I don't think he could bear the idea of the inevitable future of her being taken away from him. But then again, if this was true, he chose to give up and abandon her all together. This a beautifully made film, tries to go inside Kurt's mind and relive the events in his life that led to his tragic death. It is also the saddest movie I have ever scene.

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michaelhirakida

Never has there been a more pure, raw, gripping and grotesque documentary as Brett Morgen's Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck. A stirring look into the self destructive life of one of rock and grunge's biggest icons. Interviews from Courtney Love, Kurt's Parents and Siblings, Bass Player Krist Novoselic is seen while archive footage, old comics and drawings, intense imagery flashes onto the screen shocking and giving viewers a hard boiled look into the life of this great rock star.Morgen's visual style is seen from using new footage he directed which follows animated sequences and live action film are amazing. The movie also uses footage of inside the human body, gory comics, disturbing drawings such as Snoopy as a Nazi to show the troubled times that Cobain is going through in a most passionate way. Morgen cares about every single detail and doesn't leave anything out and although it can be tiring at times with it's long 2 hour and 25 minute running time, the film never runs out of steam and is as raw as a music documentary can get. No more History of the Eagles or the four hour epic masterpiece Running Down a Dream, this movie is life like. It breathes, it reproduces, it is crazy.Montage of Heck is one of my favorite movies of 2015, and this movie surely will be nominated for an Oscar. 95/100 A

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