Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Pop Theology

Home
Progressive Christian
Religious Music & Entertainment
‘Montage of Heck’: A Gospel of Kurt Cobain

‘Montage of Heck’: A Gospel of Kurt Cobain

Last updated on: May 19, 2015 at 3:27 pm by Richard Lindsay

‘Montage of Heck’: A Gospel of Kurt Cobain 2015-05-19T15:27:53-07:00 Richard Lindsay

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Rock Messiah? Photo of Kurt Cobain by Bruce Pavett, co-founder of SubPop Records, taken in 1989.

Last year I got a chance to see and review Seattle’s Experience Music Project’s exhibit on Kurt Cobain and the grunge era. The occasions for the exhibit were the 20th anniversary of Cobain’s death and Nirvana’s induction into the Rock-n-Roll Hall of Fame.

Now director Brett Morgen has added further to the Nirvaniana with a documentary on Cobain’s life, Montage of Heck. The film debuted at Sundance this year and had a limited theater release before being broadcast on HBO May 4th . It is now available on HBO GO.

The documentary, made with the help of Cobain’s family, deconstructs and analyzes Cobain’s life, but with a clear sense of reverence for its subject. It’s not so much The Gospel according to Kurt Cobain, but rather a gospel about Kurt Cobain.

If nothing else, Montage of Heck stands as an achievement of media art, weaving a narrative from TV, magazine, and newspaper clips, photographs, home movie and video footage, Cobain’s journals, interviews with family and friends, and audio recordings illustrated by animation. We see home movies of a young Kurt as an impossibly cute toddler, hear audio of Kurt confessing his teenage misdemeanors, and get a sense of his growth into a hyperactive, oversensitive, and deeply alienated young man.

The most common technique for advancing the narrative is the animation of Cobain’s journals. Words are scrawled across pages of notebooks as if Kurt is writing them out before our eyes, sometimes with narration, sometimes to be read by the viewer. Hundreds of drawings–he seemed to think in pictures as much as words and music—become animated on the page, often images of monsters or authority figures snarling and pulsing to the punk rock soundtrack.

The film could have used some more editing. Not every second from Kurt’s own videos of himself or every doodle of his notebook is worth the extended screen time. But the overall effect is a rock documentary of incredible intimacy.

Seeing Cobain’s creative process unfold is probably the most satisfying part of the film. Montage features extensive demo tapes and sound experiments that Cobain made on his own before he and the band were signed. Even here you can hear the beginning of the Nirvana sound: the spider-like guitar lines, fourths and fifths jumping through tri-tones; the twisted melodies that curl around minor chords without resorting to the rock security blanket of the blues; Cobain reaching down into his guts and exploding with his twangy yawp. Whatever else Cobain was—rock star, father, husband, addict—he was often a vibrating conduit of creativity.

The music tells an important story as well. The film’s composer Jeff Danna does fascinating things with some of Nirvana’s most familiar melodies, including a music box version of “All Apologies” during the home movies of Kurt as a toddler. It makes a surprisingly good lullaby, maybe because its one of their few songs in a major key.

At another point, just when Nirvana is on the precipice of worldwide acclaim, footage from the video for “Smells Like Teen Spirit” is accompanied not by the band, but by a slow, vocal rendition of the song performed by a middle school choir with excellent diction. It’s probably the only performance of “Teen Spirit” in which you can make out all the words.

The interviews add some insight into Cobain’s life. His mother, sister, father,

Holy Writ: page from Kurt Cobain’s journals.

stepfather, and first girlfriend appear and explain his troubled upbringing. Mostly, you get the sense of people who genuinely loved Kurt, but didn’t know how to love Kurt. His broken home life undoubtedly contributed to his adult demons of depression and addiction. Several interviewees make clear that Kurt’s fractured attempt to create a home life with a wife and child at the height of the craziness surrounding Nirvana came from a desperate desire for family and stability.

I must admit I felt a drop in my stomach when Courtney Love first appeared on screen. In popular legend, Love takes much of the blame for Kurt’s death. Like John and Yoko or Sid and Nancy, blaming the woman for the rock hero’s fall is part of the misogyny of rock-n-roll—the adolescent boy fantasy of being on the road with your buddies, doing drugs and drilling groupies with no governing mommy-figure to spoil the fun.

Watching the extended scenes shot on home video with Kurt and Courtney together, however, is torturous. It’s no fun seeing two strung out people exposing their bodies and clowning before a camera, laughing at jokes that are only funny to them.

Love admits she did heroin when she was pregnant with their daughter, Frances. At one point she says, “I had already done heroin, beat the thing, had a rule…” and then she skitters off into senselessness. If she had “beat” heroin, why did she take up with an addict boyfriend, and/or make no attempt to stop him from using? It’s hard not to see Love as a classic enabler.

The saddest scene in the film is when Love tries to give Frances her first haircut, and Kurt is clearly high, unable to focus, and nodding off even as he holds her.

In my classes on popular culture and religion, I have used Kurt Cobain as an example of a rock-n-roll messiah. Departed pop culture figures are often cast as martyrs by their fans, killed by the oppressive systems of authority that they stood so strongly against.

It’s hard not to see the process of messianization happening in the film and in the rituals of remembrance around the anniversary of his death. In Montage, word after word, image after image of Cobain’s journals scrawl across the screen as though every line is written from God. You can even buy a reproduction of one of his journals.

Kurt’s mother seems to take on a kind of Marian role in the film. As she says near the beginning, “I used to think, ‘Why did I marry Don Cobain?’ It was like, ‘No, everything happened for a reason. Kurt had to be born. It was a must.’”

Holy Relic: Kurt Cobain Signature One Star from Converse–the style of shoe Cobain was wearing when he died.

Fans can buy copies of Kurt’s guitars, even copies of the shoes he was wearing when he committed suicide. This seems like crass consumerism, but no more than the medieval relic sellers who sold pieces of the “true cross” or cow bones that supposedly came from saints. The value to the buyer is not that the items are real, but that they can imagine themselves having an intimate, even tactile relationship with the divine body.

I sometimes get pushback when I say that figures like John Lennon, Kurt Cobain, or Tupac act as pop culture messiahs, and may indeed have had qualities that compare favorably to Jesus Christ. “Lennon abused his first wife and neglected his oldest son,” people tell me. “Cobain was a junky.” “Tupac was a gangster.”

I’m not sure how these arguments are relevant. Jesus may well have been a jerk for all we know. (In fact, it’s kind of in the record, see Matthew 15:21-28.) Jesus was an apocalyptic prophet who is said to have made pronouncements like the “little apocalypses” in Mark, Matthew, and Luke, that were as weird and destructive as anything Cobain wrote in his journals.

All of this gets to the point that messiahs are often anointed not by God but by popular acclaim, by their ability to embody some deep need or hope for a particular, and often marginalized, community. They often have little control over their legacies or how they will be remembered.

Cobain did not want to be the voice of a generation, and it may have been the very clamoring of his fans that led to his death. But he really didn’t have a choice in the matter. For a cohort of young people that grew up in the rubble of the 60’s—divorce, AIDS and addiction, instead of sex, drugs and rock-n-roll—Cobain was an avatar, a hero, a saint, and even a messiah.

A park bench that stands as a shrine to Kurt Cobain in Viretta Park, Seattle, within view of the house where he died.

Film

Music

Previous Post

May 12, 2015

Cross Roads: Faith and Renewal, Getting Lost in Cannes

Next Post

May 21, 2015 Cross Roads Faith And Film Renewal: Cannes Review of "Filosofi Kopi"

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category Classics DVD Film Music News Pop Culture Events Print Sports Television Uncategorized Video Games

Select a Month March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 May 2011 April 2011 March 2011 February 2011 January 2011 December 2010 November 2010 October 2010 September 2010 August 2010 July 2010 June 2010 May 2010 April 2010 March 2010 February 2010 January 2010 December 2009 November 2009 October 2009 September 2009 August 2009 July 2009 June 2009 May 2009 April 2009 March 2009 February 2009 January 2009 December 2008 November 2008 October 2008 September 2008 August 2008 July 2008 June 2008 May 2008 April 2008 March 2008 February 2008 January 2008 December 2007 November 2007 October 2007 September 2007 August 2007 July 2007 June 2007 May 2007 April 2007 March 2007

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your ____.

Select your answer to see how you score.

Mind Actions Spirit Heart