This April will mark the 21st anniversary of Kurt Cobain’s death – a moment in our shared cultural history that this writer remembers vividly – and to coincide, a brand new documentary is on the verge of release. Titled Kurt Cobain: Montage Of Heck, the insightful film hails from Brett Morgen, who previously delivered Hollywood takedown The Kid Stays In The Picture. For his latest revelatory work, Morgen explores the truth behind the iconic Nirvana frontman, which you can now glimpse in the film’s first official trailer.
After bowing at Sundance earlier this year, Montage Of Heck has received universal acclaim from critics and fans alike. Most praise has centred around its honest, eye-opening portrait of the musical genius. On the basis of this trailer alone, that appears to be a sound assessment which will no doubt encourage many fans to hunt down a participating cinema when the film opens next month.
“Roughly 85% of the material that audiences will see in Montage of Heck has never been seen or rarely seen,” Morgen told Yahoo! Movies, who debuted the trailer. “This includes several audio cues, portions of a recorded autobiography, a Cobain cover of The Beatles’ And I Love Her, extensive home movies of Kurt’s childhood and never before seen interviews with Kurt’s father, mother, and sister. The film also features never before seen footage of Kurt at home with Courtney [Love] and Frances [Cobain].”
Kurt Cobain: Montage Of Heck opens in UK theaters on April 10th, and airs in the US May 4th on HBO.
Experience Kurt Cobain like never before in the first fully authorized portrait of the famed rock music icon. Director Brett Morgen expertly blends Cobain’s personal archive of art, music, and never-before-seen home movies with animation and revelatory interviews with his family and closest confidants. Following Kurt from his earliest years in Aberdeen, Washington, through the height of his fame, a visceral and detailed cinematic insight of an artist at odds with his surroundings emerges.
While Cobain craved the spotlight even as he rejected the trappings of fame, his epic arc depicts a man who stayed true to his earliest punk rock convictions, always identifying with the “outsider” and ensuring the music came first.
Fans and those of the Nirvana generation will learn things about Cobain they never knew while those who have recently discovered the man and his music will know what makes him the lasting icon that he is.
