Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain has been profiled before in film, but no one has ever enjoyed the access Brett Morgen (The Kid Stays in the Picture) gained to create Montage of Heck, the very first authorised portrait of the legendary grunge hero. This remarkable documentary expertly blends together Cobain’s personal archive of art, music and never before seen home movies and animation with revelatory interviews with his family and closest confidants. Following Kurt from his earliest years in Aberdeen, Washington through to the height of his fame and unhappy unravelling (one entry in his diary is simply the phrase Go Kill Yourself repeated over and over), it’s an eight years in the making labour of love that offers a private peek into Cobain’s mind and is that rarest of things: a documentary that focuses on the person rather than the personality, the artist instead of the art. Montage of Heck is a biography told from the inside out – you get the sense that Kurt would have enjoyed it. Fans will learn things about Cobain they never knew while those who are yet to discover him and his music will know what makes him the lasting icon that he is.

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