Artwork by JUAN OSBORNE
ROLLING STONE: We get the unfiltered Kurt experience, all disturbing sketches, poems in progress and aspirational lists. We also get a disjointed, disorienting look at fame through his eyes, seen as a jumble of shows, news reports and vapid TV interrogations that all bleed together. And we get an uncomfortably intimate look at his life with Courtney, including self-shot close-ups of the couple making out, bitching about their treatment in the press and a pregnant Love showing off her breasts. This is a couple drunk on love, and per the glossy-to-tabloid reports that Morgen sprinkles in, often high on drugs. But it’s that first part that really comes across, especially when Frances Bean Cobain enters the picture. “Frances told me that, ‘People act like my dad was Santa Claus,'” Morgen said after the screening. “‘And he wasn’t Santa Claus.’ I think she realized that after seeing the movie.” Kurt was a doting dad, even when outside pressures put him on edge or his health problems zonked him out. His love for his child was always public knowledge, but witnessing him rolling around on the floor with her as she cracks up drives the point home. This is not a spokesman for a generation. This is a human being, and a husband, and a father. Which just makes it that much more heartbreaking to watch Kurt unravel via violent voicemails and pages of his notebook that attest to a cry for help — one entry is simply the phrase “Go kill yourself” repeated over and over. The most haunting moment comes when Rolling Stone’s David Fricke can be heard over the soundtrack asking Cobain about the In Utero outtake “I Hate Myself and Want to Die”: “Either you’re being really satirical, or you’re going to a real dark place here.” Kurt’s response is a laugh that’s positively chilling. MORE