FILM... & MUSIC: Kurt Cobain - Montage of Heck

Kurt Cobain is the 90s rock idol.  If you want to make people think ‘The 1990’s’, a picture of Kurt Cobain will do nicely.  (The Gallagher brothers?  Are you serious?)

Montage Of Heck is a documentary that attempts to make the last of the great dead rock icons a human being.  As well as concert footage of Kurt Cobain being a live rock icon, we see home footage of him messing about with his wife and baby and hear him doing mundane things like answering the phone. 

It is definitely a documentary about Kurt Cobain, and Nirvana is covered as the most famous and successful way Kurt Cobain chose to express himself.  Equal importance is given to his journals and to a lesser extent his artwork.  Kris Novoselic is interviewed, but significantly as Kurt’s best friend, not the bass player of Nirvana.  Dave Grohl only appears in archive footage, and forget the previous drummers, personnel, etc.  If you want to learn about the history of the band this isn’t that story – a lot of it just happens to overlap.  It is expected of you as a viewer that you’ll know at least the famous hits already, as most of the songs in the film are represented either by demos, live footage or ‘reworkings’ (a nursery-mobile version of ‘All Apologies’ soundtracks baby films of Kurt, and a 'Carmina Burana'-style choir version of ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ plays over the original video).  All of this is very obviously in danger of drifting into alienating, Just For The Fans territory, but is also a way of making the point that this is not a rock doc.  In fact, taking away the familiar music serves as a way of taking it back from the audience and making it about Kurt again.

Of course the film fails in demythologising Cobain (the trailer reiterates the icon, let alone the film).  It doesn't really bother trying, because let's face it - the man is a cultural icon and that's a fact, like it or not.  I mean, why would we want to watch home videos of someone who wasn’t famous?  The fact that someone has gone to the trouble of putting animation to a tape of him answering the phone is instead testament to the fact that he is still entirely culturally significant.  More than 20 years after his death, it’s not uncommon to see people wearing Nirvana t-shirts and hoodies… In Utero got the Super Duper The Money Will Roll Right In Deluxe Edition treatment just last year and I’m sure it did very well…  The fame that ruined him has stayed almost as strong, long after the man has died.  It’s unlikely he will fade into obscurity, even if the music does.

What Montage Of Heck does achieve is creating a celebration of the man and explain who Kurt Cobain was when the media wasn’t around.  It's about putting some flesh and soul on the cult cardboard cutout Dead Rock Star (registered trademark, patent applied for).  He was someone who thought being a rock star was ‘the answer’.  He then unexpectedly became the biggest rockstar in the world, and maybe hadn’t realised in advance how much privacy and freedom he would lose in return.  He looks much, much happier in his home videos, dicking around with the wife he obviously loved, than the footage of interviews where his face says ‘not another, another fucking interview’.  Quite often he’s hiding his face so you can’t even tell that much. The quotes from his journals have to be taken with a pinch of salt, because everyone self-dramatizes in their diaries.  But bearing that in mind, they are still bitter about the same themes – fame and its related problems, heroin addiction and the stomach pains he seems to have almost constantly felt.

The fact is, he was a funny, talented, troubled guy who and frankly didn’t need all the shit that fame brought him – his life becoming a story consumed by the media, who sold it to us (and we bought it willingly), the easily gotten heroin and all the rest of it.  The film ends with a caption saying that Kurt took his own life one month later.  At the time, my reaction was that it was abrupt, and disappointment that they weren’t going to analyse his suicide in more depth.  And then, the other day I realised why I was slightly disturbed by my reaction – almost disgusted.  In a film which shows a man’s personal home videos and recordings, including those of him as a child, I still wanted more…  I literally wanted blood.  The whole film is scattered with things never intended to be seen by anyone outside of the the Cobains’ circle of family and friends; Kurt’s journals were a highly personal stream of consciousness which for all we know he would have been embarrassed about anyone else reading.  And I’m there consuming his private life as entertainment, and wanting more even after so much has been given. 

Intentionally or not, this film reminds the audience of the part they played in his death.  He gave as much as he could, and his audience always wanted more.  And he felt he couldn’t give anything anymore.  So he stopped.

FILM: The Wolf Of Wall Street

New York, New York...

Today's guest blog comes courtesy of Ms Sarah Scoonover, aka Asha Vose from Red Room.  Originally there was talk of a House Of Cards 2 preview, but apparently it's too good to talk about without giving anything away.  Instead, she gives her thoughts on Scorsese's latest...

In keeping with the blog, I will discuss The Wolf of Wall Street, the latest Martin Scorsese film. Scorsese is famous for dark films with a heavy masculine audience like Goodfellas, Gangs of New York, and Taxi Driver. He’s brilliant, beloved of actors and screenwriters alike. There are a number of recurrent themes in his films: corruption, the casual nature of criminal violence, and self-sabotage among others. This film covered all of them.

I went into the theater (that’s right, American spelling) on a weeknight. It’s a nice theater, but the bored police officer who has been there every night since the shootings last year, made it hard to feel completely safe. It was easy to feel watched.

After the previews, I heard the unmistakable narration of Leondardo DiCaprio as main character Jordan Belfort. He opens the film snorting coke from a stripper’s most un-sunlit place.

At that moment, my experience of the film changed in a fundamental way. I went in expecting a film about finance, crime, and possibly drugs. I in no way expected to laugh until I fell out of my chair. But I did, repeatedly during the film.

The film isn’t light-hearted, but there’s a special kind of dark humor that carries it through. There is heavy criticism directed at the perceived apathy of the American people toward financial regulation and white collar crime in general. There are few, if any, good people in the movie.

What I’m trying to say, is it isn’t the easiest film to watch. It’s rough on a viewer; the characters make increasingly amoral decisions, bad things happen to good people, drugs and prostitutes abound, finally an awful lot of money is won and lost under the worst of circumstances to the worst people.

If you can find humor in the lowest rungs of humanity, then you’ll enjoy this film as much as I did; however, I do feel compelled to add a few caveats. Warnings for the viewer: there are uses of bad language, sex, and drugs in the film that will put off even the most seasoned moviegoer. Also, you’ll leave the theater with a powerful urge to try Quaaludes.

You have been warned.

If you like my writing style, I mostly talk books over at Redroom under Asha Vose. Thanks again for letting me post.

Without further ado, I return you to your regular blogger.

So what are you waiting for?  Go check out Asha's other work at Redroom!