nnx666
Honestly, this is a review of the first 30 minutes. Because that's how long I lasted before turning it off.What promises to be an interesting documentary, quickly turned into a repetition of "Courtney is evil" statements. Mentioning one time that there's no Nirvana music because she owns the rights and wouldn't approve is OK. Doing it time and time again, combined with seemingly only looking for people who have bad things to say about her becomes boring rapidly.I'm not a fan of Courtney Love at all, but seeing this documentary's unashamed skewed look at the whole thing is unbearable.
fedor8
First of all, Kurt Cobain and Courtney Lovestein were both morons. Pure and simple. This is not a documentary about "visionaries" but rather about two (or more) jaded rock junkies, both having serious mental problems, the one major difference being that one of them had actual musical talent, while the other was merely a groupie-turned-bad-singer. Courtney managed to prevent this documentary from being released for several years (if I'm not mistaken) and has probably successfully hampered its distribution later on. The reason for this is two-fold: in K&C she is (in)directly being accused or at least suspected of murdering Kurt (through whomever), but even more galling to her must be the way the film portrays her character; she is presented as an ugly woman from a dysfunctional family, suffering greatly from an inferiority complex which had driven her in her entire life to succeed, thereby trying to prove that she was "worthy". She is portrayed as mean-spirited, hypocritical, stupid, envious, primitive, untrustworthy etc. I, for one, tend to think that is a pretty fair assessment. The fact that Kelly Osbourne once described Love as "the most intelligent person I ever met" should pretty much confirm this rather than dispute it...As for Kurt, I followed the rise and fall of Nirvana from late 1991 onwards, and was immediately struck by the totally phony disinterest the three of them supposedly had for their sudden fame. They wanted everyone to believe that they were too "cool" and "artistic", i.e. not "shallow enough" to enjoy their new-found status as rock gods. This fake image was something that pervaded much of the grunge scene. Nothing could have been further from the truth, least of all in Kurt's case. 13 years after his death, a lot of the less-than-flattering truths about him are rising to the surface. Apparently, he had dreamed about becoming a rock star half his life, a typical attention-seeker, his ambition probably fueled - like Love - by an immense sense of non-worth. Kurt loved money and was very interested how much Nirvana was selling hence how much money would be going into his own pockets. Grunge music was a major scam, at least from the non-music side of it. No-one who cares only about the music and the "higher ideals" (that's a laugh) signs to a major record-label and then proceeds to make videos for MTV. Steven Sutherland, a British music journalist, has described Cobain as a hypocrite and a generally very unlikable guy. Sure, his life is a sad story - at least his childhood and mental disease - but this is also a guy who not only got along with a trash-floozy like Love, not only dated her (which is bad enough), but actually MARRIED her! That must speak volumes both about his character and his intelligence. Plus, he had an enormous ego. Just like Bono or Michael Stipe, he hid behind a phony facade, while raking in millions, all the while being "the man of the people". Only mental disease distinguished him from the above-mentioned posers. Broomfield's documentary includes a segment in which Kurt threatens a journalist just because she dared write a critical piece about his darling comrade-junkie-in-arms, Love.As for Nick Broomfield, this man doesn't make documentaries that can be taken at face value. He is very far from being a manipulator, propagandist, and liar of the Michael Moore sort, but he isn't exactly naive either. His film about the (very guilty) female serial-killer Aileen Wournos takes an astoundingly biased pro-Wournos stand, and this fact alone must make one question his objectivity. The other film he made I saw was the one about Heidi Fleiss, the "Hollywood Madam". That was a fascinating film and I would recommend it to anyone who enjoyed K&C.Apart from the immense struggle for fame which characterized both blonde junkies, another central theme is the "mystery" regarding Kurt's death. Courtney? Broomfield really lays it on thick, hoping his movie would make a solid enough case for a murder rather than suicide, which was supposed to give the movie great notoriety hence make Nick a very rich man. Of course, he doesn't go too far with the accusations for legal reasons. There would have been no problem with Nick's ambition, except for the simple fact that it should be more than obvious to anyone that it really was suicide. Il Duce, a fascinating singer/hobo, tells how Courtney offered him 50,000 dollars to clip Kurt. Testimony is only as reliable as its source. The fact that he died only months after giving the interview for this film does not prove anything.The film also features Kurt's good friend and drug-dealer, the singer from Earth, a stoner rock band. The way this guy looks and talks is fascinating. Another highlight is when the hypocrisy of Hollywood is exposed at the end of the movie when Nick "invades" some pathetic PC gala dinner with Courtney - of all people - as one of its main speakers.As far as Kurt's death goes, it has nothing to do with either fame or the even more ludicrous notion that he killed himself because he supposedly "sold out" musically. But it has a lot to do with his manic-depression (which can often end in suicide), his drug use - which was a major part of his life BEFORE he hit it big with Nirvana, and last but not least genetics; he had a history of suicides in his family. Besides, does Courtney seem bright enough to pull off a murder of a famous person, a murder so perfect that it would fool all those detectives and forensic experts? Forget it.There is an aspect of Kurt's death that is very tragic, but that never gets mentioned, and this is the fact that his death lead to the creation of the Foo Fighters. Now, THAT is a damn shame...
