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Kurt Cobain: About a Son

A cough-syrup trip through the myth of Cobain

By JAMES PARKER | October 31, 2007

3.5 Stars

EVOCATIVE IMAGES OF DEAD BIRDS: Interesting melancholia.

Now this is interesting. AJ Schnack has taken the interview tapes that journalist Michael Azerrad made with Kurt Cobain in 1992 and 1993, added some evocative images of dead birds, moody high-school kids, and disease-covered Puget Sound, and made a sort of amphibian non-movie: a slow cough-syrup trip through the myth of Cobain, as narrated by the man himself. Azerrad already got a book out of these tapes (2001’s Come As You Are: The Story of Nirvana), but this is something else: undiluted on-the-phone-at-3-am Kurt, with one awful prophetic moment where Courtney is heard moaning feebly at him from an upstairs room. Once again we are reminded of the mistiness of the Pacific Northwest and the thorniness of K. Cobain. On dogs: “I dislike them.” On average people: “I just have to confront them and tell them that I hate their guts.” Nothing happens exactly, but melancholia seeps from the screen, producing a silvery smog in which to sit quietly and drink one’s pennyroyal tea.

Related: Kurt Cobain, Scene and heard, State of Nirvana, More

Topics: Reviews , Kurt Cobain, Michael Azerrad, Nirvana (Musical Group)

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