Film review: "Kurt Cobain: About a Son"

"Corn on the cops! Corn on the cops! The cops are coming! They're going to kill you!" An eight-year-old towhead boy, underweight and exploding with energy as only a future Ritalin candidate could, scampered about the bland streets of Aberdeen, Wash., heaving soda cans full of rocks at patrolling police cars. Typical suburban kid in search of alleviating a little boredom, really, but not an image one would readily associate with a man included on those cheesy Forever 27 posters of rock ‘n’ roll stars who died in their prime. Ooh, it makes you wonder: Jimi Hendrix’s first whimsical life experience coming not with lysergic acid diethylamide but with the tooth fairy, or a young Jim Morrison looking to Winnie the Pooh as an early literary guide rather than William Blake. Just imagine, rock icons as people, too. We learn a lot about Kurt Cobain in the 2007 documentary “Kurt Cobain: About A Son,” where St. Kurt, suicide poster child reigning atop his pedestal of "changing music for eternity" is placed back within the realm of humanity through words spoken by Kurt, himself. The film pairs audio interviews conducted over 25 hours with journalist Michael Azerrad, who wrote Nirvana biography “Come As You Are,” with modern footage of spots Kurt frequented in his abbreviated lifetime - homes, hangouts and workplaces in Aberdeen, Olympia and Seattle: the road he traversed to reach his house; the view of Lake Washington from his kitchen; the bridge he purportedly slept under during a stint of homelessness; and in the background, the bands that shaped his own musical vision. We discover that the perennially pissed off junkie who lamented his own success was also surprisingly humorous, abnormally sensitive and saddled with traumatic childhood memories that haunted him until April 5, 1994, when he pointed a shotgun into his mouth and pulled the trigger. Kurt’s words mostly overshadow the film's visuals; unlabeled, seemingly random buildings, roads and people tend to fade into the background, which is fortunate especially when confronted with cheesy portraits of "the common man" whose facial imperfections are intended to be moving in their utter humanity but instead seem more of an awkward distraction. The film features moments as powerful and as overwhelming as the music Kurt created. In one of the most striking quotes, he declares his personal life "nobody's goddamn business. Fuck them. They don't need to know everything about me." Yet gaining insight into his personal life is the whole point of the book he authorized, and also the crux of this movie. It all helps the equation make sense - how someone who's supposed to have everything (and we all know millions of dollars and a complete lack of privacy is everything) could murder himself. Not too many know about Kurt's affinity for turtles. The thick shells covering their spines, which some think to be protective barriers, are actually so delicate so as to make them more vulnerable to harm.