I attended a screening of -Kurt Cobain, About A Son at the Seattle International Film Festival. As you can expect with a hometown audience, the audience was ready to fall in love with this film going in. For the most part, the film did not disappoint. The most powerful aspect of the film is the fact that we hear Kurt Cobain's voice speaking his own words, a far better idea than the standard documentary format that features "experts" and fans talking about what made a person great. In the interviews, Cobain is happy, depressed, funny, bitter, excited, exhausted, gracious, resentful, kind, sarcastic ... but always engaging and interesting. It was also powerful to see the images of the towns in which Cobain lived -- Aberdeen, Olympia, and Seattle -- as he talked about different phases of his life. I agree with an earlier poster's comment that saving actual images of Cobain and Nirvana until the end really worked. After all, it is Cobain's voice that is his greatest legacy, and by filling our eyes with images of industrial workers, train trestles, run-down houses, liquor stores, street corners, and so on, the film reminds the viewer that Cobain was a man, first and foremost, and an icon later. And the soundtrack is AWESOME! Kurt talks a great deal about bands that influenced him as he grew up and started writing songs, and many of these artists were kind enough to grant permission to the film-makers to use their music for free. I hope that a soundtrack album is released at some point. My only complaint was the film-makers' choice to include images of places, buildings, and scenes (especially in Seattle) that were not around when Cobain was alive. How much did the Mariners' baseball stadium (which opened in 1999) "shape" the person who became Kurt Cobain, and I somehow doubt that Cobain spent any time at Starbucks. Nevertheless, I highly recommend the film to anyone who loves Nirvana or is fascinated by the man.
