I was a little baffled to say the least when this documentary didn’t make it to the shortlist for this year’s Best Documentary Feature Oscar; even though I hadn’t seen it yet, it just seemed like it couldn’t fail to convey something more than the average music doc. 90 minutes later, and I kinda see why the Academy ignored it. Though this compilation of conversations with Kurt himself laid over seemingly random shots of moody locales naturally stumbles upon its share of profound moments, it’s not a lot more than the sum of its parts, and I’d sooner watch Gus Van Sant’s Last Days again, or finally get around to reading the man’s journals (if the movie accomplished anything, it’s putting that very task back up on my to-do list).

Unlike the Scott Walker doc I watched before this, which was awash with the work of the artist, there’s nary a note of his own music to be heard. The film makers clearly made a conscious decision to distance the artist from the art – you don’t even see his face until the very end – and succeeded so well that ultimately the movie feels as distant as Kurt ever did at his most cryptic and defensive … or worse, like Courtney. His “narration” often feels a little like Malcolm McLaren’s stuff in The Great Rock ‘n’ Roll Swindle (“Terrorise, threaten, and insult your own useless generation…”), just a great eff-ewe to anyone who feels an artist “owes” something to the public. Though I realise there’s something in that argument, it’s really not something I like to hear an artist whine about; especially not this artist, and especially not for 90 minutes. It’s intriguing as anything about Kurt would be by default; but absolutely nothing more.

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 17th, 2008 at 5:37 am in 3 hearts, Movie Reviews and tagged as documentary, music, Nineties, suicide. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.