Kurt Cobain - About a Son
by AJ Schnack
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Courtney Love, Kurt Cobain, Michael AzerradDirector: AJ Schnack
Brand: Uni
Producer: Michael Azerrad
Cinematographer: Wyatt Troll
Editor: AJ Schnack
Producer: Chris Green
Producer: Jared Moshe
Producer: Matthew Shattuck
Producer: Noah Khoshbin
Producer: Ravi Anne
Producer: Richard Lim
Producer: Shirley Moyers
Producer: Stephanie Meurer
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language)
Format: Color, DVD, NTSC, Widescreen
Picture Format: 2.35:1
Running Time: 96 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2008-02-19
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Model: SF10719
Studio: Shout Factory Theatr
Product features:
- Original music from Death Cab for Cutie's Benjamin Gibbard and Nirvana producer Steve Fisk anchors this documentary about the late grunge rocker. KURT COBAIN ABOUT A SON closely examines the life of the musician from his childhood to his tragic death. Format: DVD AUDIO Genre: MUSIC DVD Artist: COBAIN, KURT Rating: NR Age: 826663107197 UPC: 826663107197 M
Movie Reviews of Kurt Cobain - About a Son
Movie Review: Kurt Cobain in His Own Words
Summary: 5 Stars
It is hard to find a single figure that looms larger in recent rock history than Kurt Cobain. It's harder still to come across an artist whose true nature was so obscured, even distorted, by his own legend. About a Son, based on interviews with Come as You Are author Michael Azzerad, offers a rare, sincere, and deeply moving glimpse into Cobain's private world. In the process, it reveals a side of the late musician often left out of sensationalized media portrayals of his life, drug use, and tragic end--he is perceptive, thoughtful, and quietly articulate, reflecting on his experiences with a candor unmatched in other interviews.
What makes the film unusual among documentaries is director AJ Schnack's determination to stay out of the way and allow Cobain to tell his own story. Eschewing the typical documentary format in which the viewer's gaze is focused on the subject, About a Son creates the sense of looking out through Kurt's eyes, seeing the images he would have seen and hearing the music he listened to. There are no Nirvana songs--just the music that inspired and influenced Cobain--and the visuals are a montage of evocative images of Aberdeen, Olympia, and Seattle. Listening to Kurt's sleepy, gravelly narration (most of the interviews were conducted in the wee hours of the morning) against the backdrop of these images elicits the feeling of taking a long stroll and talking intimately with an old friend.
As you stroll through Washington streets slicked with rain, passing floating bundles of Aberdeen timber, punk rock Olympia kids, and the city lights of Seattle, Kurt talks about his parents' divorce, his lifelong sense of isolation, the unexpected consequences of fame, and his unabashed devotion to his wife and daughter. He tells of a life clearly fraught with pain and depression, yet fueled with creative passion. The personality he reveals is one of contradictions: the desire for recognition vs. the desire for solitude; deep concern for humanity vs. revulsion toward humanity's darker side; a harsh reality vs. a longing for the simplicity of childhood.
About a Son is as much a portrait of the Pacific Northwest as it is a rendering of Kurt Cobain. Alongside breathtaking cinematography, Cobain's narrative shows that many of these private contradictions were the product of a deep-seated ambivalence toward his environment. As a child, he was alternately comforted and stifled by small-town Aberdeen; as a budding artist, he was nurtured by Olympia's creativity, yet felt like an outsider; in his Seattle days, he helped place the city on the musical map while deriding media hype about the "grunge scene."
As the lone figure of Cobain fades at the film's end, one cannot help but feel the loss of an extraordinary artist--and an extraordinary individual--as he vanishes from sight.
Summary of Kurt Cobain - About a Son
Kurt Cobain was deeply suspicious of journalists, but he trusted Rolling Stone's Michael Azerrad enough to give him unprecedented access during the writing of the book Come As You Are: The Story of Nirvana. Consisting entirely of Cobain's never-before-heard musings and recollections recorded by Azerrad and laid on top of newly shot footage of the places that he lived, Kurt Cobain: About A Son offers an intimate portrait of the rocker's troubled formative years and meteoric rise to stardom. The result is the story of one of rock's greatest icons as it's never been told before. DVD Bonus Features:
Additional audio from the Kurt Cobain interviews
Behind-the-scenes featurette
Following in the deeply idiosyncratic footsteps of Last Days, About a Son plays more like autobiography than documentary. Gus Van Sant's feature extrapolates moments from the life of Kurt Cobain (with Michael Pitt as a musician named Blake), while A.J. Schnack?s non-fiction film adheres closer to the facts, but advances a more radical Koyaanisqatsi-like approach. First off, Cobain supplies the narration, but the filmmaker avoids pictures of the alternative icon until the end. (He culled the voice-over from interviews conducted by author Michael Azerrad for Come as You Are: The Story of Nirvana.) Beyond-the-grave narration isn't a new concept--see Tupac: Resurrection--but Schnack (Gigantic: A Tale of Two Johns) ups the ante by excluding talking heads, concert footage, and other staples of the genre. Instead, he uses still and time-lapse photography to explore Cobain's Northwest, i.e. Aberdeen, Olympia, and Seattle. The artist's unguarded reflections create a sense of intimacy as specific locations illustrate his words. Conversely, the lack of portraiture and self-penned music generates a feeling of absence. The soundtrack combines an ambient score from producer Steve Fisk and Death Cab for Cutie's Ben Gibbard with Cobain favorites, like David Bowie, Cheap Trick, and the Vaselines (available on a separate CD). For more specifics, interested parties can always turn to tomes by Azerrad, Gina Arnold, Charles R. Cross, and Everett True. About a Son doesn't presume to provide a definitive portrait, but Schnack's rigorous avoidance of convention results in an experience far more dream-like than depressing. --Kathleen C. Fennessy
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