Kurt Cobain About a Son

Based on 25 hours of fortuitously recorded conversations between Michael Azerrad and Kurt Cobain, AJ Schnack’s lovely art film does an admirable job of humanising a misunderstood icon. Noted music journalist Azerrad is best known for his comprehensive 1993 book, Come As You Are: The Story of Nirvana. In the "The Voices Behind About a Son” featurette, Azerrad recalls encountering Cobain while writing Nirvana’s first Rolling Stone cover story. In researching his book, Azerrad became close to Cobain, hanging out at his house between midnight and dawn for a series of casual interviews. These unreleased recordings are the film’s centrepieces, as Cobain narrates a loosely knit document of his years in Aberdeen, Olympia and Seattle. Cobain’s articulate candour casts him as romantic, self-loathing, content, miserable, homicidal, sickly, suicidal, and capable of any manner of states. Pressed up against Schnack’s lovingly rendered and contemporary cinematography (no video footage of Cobain is ever utilised) and a soundtrack of his heroes (i.e., Big Black, Leadbelly, etc.), Cobain sounds like a regular person with relatable struggles and, as a disembodied spectre, he seems like a timeless figure.