I'm too young to remember Kurt Cobain as a spokesman for a generation, and due to that, I'm sometimes envious of my brother. I think he managed to just get into his teens with Nirvana still being a current rock'n'roll band, as opposed to this legendary phenomenon. As inadequate as it seems, my whole recollection of grunge as a contemporary thing is that flannel was cool, and I had this awesome tie dyed t-shirt and then suddenly Britpop came up and damn if it wasn’t awesome too. But I digress. I can't go for the idolatry related to Kurt Cobain. I remember reading the back of this weird translated biography - Christopher Sanford's originally I think - which said something akin to "he screamed his way to the top, and took his life knowing what he was about to do". I'm proud that even in my teens, reading that, I just knew that the book wasn't worth my while. I mean your teens are fertile ground for that kinda nonsense. It’s probably the most common age for various forms of angst and depression to take hold in a person’s life.

Nirvana, the supposedly “last great rock band”, with a front man that publicly spoke of his depression, is an easy subject for being made into this icon of negativity and darkness. Yet I think that a lot of the fans of Cobain’s music find his work more multifaceted than it is generally given credit for.

His, or that is, Nirvana’s music? It's aggressive and painful, but also pretty and there's a humor to it that is often neglected. Nirvana's fame is obviously intertwined with Kurt Cobain's untimely death, but on the other hand, can you seriously claim that Love Buzz or On a Plain or Very Ape aren't kinda funny? Or The Vaselines' covers that they did? Or Ain't It a Shame? It's music to jump around to at shows, dammit! So Cobain’s delivery was a bit mumbledrawl and he had hair in his eyes? Whose aren't except politicians' and those of all the other lizard people.

Perhaps it’s something that’s easy to pick upon and to put down because we’re still not used to an artist displaying that level of vulnerability while also clearly wielding considerable talent. And it’s thus easier to create a narrative of a tragic icon or a hero, than to admit that the artist was or is a real person. It is also interesting to note that this sort of myth making seems to apply only to anyone involved in art. Superstar athletes, for example, are far less prone to this.  It often seems that feats of sportsmanship, while expressive and beautiful in the context of a sport, are more removed from the spectator. Art on the other hand can get uncomfortably close and needs a conscious distancing of oneself from the artist to be bearable.

There are books and documentaries about Nirvana's brief existence, their momentary flare in the public eye, and their lasting impact on rock music. Most recently there's Brett Morgen’s Montage of Heck, which I watched a while back.

In contrast to the myth making described above, Morgen attempts to bring the viewer as close to Cobain’s inner world as possible. I can identify with Morgen's view of Cobain as being afraid of humiliation and seeking refuge from uncertainty in what he's good at. But on the other hand, the point that he was driven to by – according to Morgen – humiliation, feels odd. It seems like such a simple take on such a complex thing as a human being. There must be so much left out about him and the people he knew.  Whoever really knows you anyway? You can spend the best part of your life with someone and you still don’t know them and they don’t know you. There are just some things that are inherent to the person, and thus unknowable.

Morgen does present an argument about Cobain’s personality, and why he did what he did. Which brings us to the documentary itself: why is this supposedly such an occasion? Aren't there enough takes on Kurt Cobain's life as it is? First off, there are. Second, I don’t know. I mean, there's even the precedent of Charles Cross going over Cobain's effects and coming up with a fictional chapter of Cobain's final thoughts. I seriously don’t have words for what kind of a person puts that into print.

To Morgen's credit, he sticks to what might be loosely called a journalistic approach. He posits the idea of the overwhelming effect of humiliation on Cobain throughout his life, but doesn't go off on a thoroughly fictional tangent as Cross did. The documentary itself is an effective narrative construed of the material that Morgen shifted through. While watching I could at least entertain the filmmaker's notion.

Yet who knows, though. The more and more I think about it, it just seems, as said, a simplistic point of view. So there's a tape made by Kurt Cobain, but no one really has any idea of his intent in recording it. On the other hand, sometimes even single feelings can amount to a world of hurt. In the end, however, I don’t think I can buy into nor endorse anyone's interpretation of reasons for someone else committing suicide.

There's been praise for the documentary in that it is "the final word on Kurt Cobain". At least the footage doesn't display him as the martyr that he's been made out to be; seeing him high should make some of those rock myths a lot less glorious. If there’s any tragedy involved, it’s because you feel sympathy for a gifted man in a bad place, nothing more or less.  He did good with his art though, and, well, maybe that ought to be the final word on him.

As an afterthought, I want to point out that people seem to really get with hardline values these days. Among others, those with substance issues are seen as an inferior, subhuman, group of people. I figure some of it is down to people thinking of those with a drug problem as this bunch of “those others” who deliberately remove themselves from the world. Maybe some do at first, kind of, but after a while addiction isn’t exactly deliberate. If there's something to be said for Morgen's documentary, it's that people with hardline values might get some perspective out of it.

As a biography, Morgen’s documentary seems to omit things in favor of narrative.  However, as a depiction of a prodigiously talented individual falling prey to whatever haunts them, it is a reminder of the depths of both light and dark in a person. Most of us are not as talented and ambitious as Kurt Cobain was, but we can be sweet, funny, supportive and caring for anyone next to us.  I figure that if a viewer, especially someone with a firmly set attitude towards substance abuse, can find a broader perspective on these things due to the documentary, then the film was worth making. Whether it is the definitive Kurt Cobain/Nirvana-documentary, I don’t know, or really care. Oh wait, I do. The definitive document on him and them are the records. Go and give them a spin.