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Movie: Kurt Cobain About a Son.

By Nick Hodge | May 1, 2008

About a son

Photo: Rod Yates, editor of Empire Magazine inter­view­ing Michael Azer­rad on his movie, Kurt Cobain About a Son.

Kurt Cobain looms out of the cinema screen like a mel­an­cholic Vik­ing, ready to pil­lage our minds. Like the images of other dead celebrit­ies, the image sets off thought pat­terns and we clas­sify: drug addict, father, musican.

Like all nar­rat­ives per­petu­ated by the one dimen­sional main stream media, he was also a son. A tal­en­ted per­son with real prob­lems, real skills and dreams.

A son of divorced par­ents, a com­mon aflic­tion of chil­dren of the late 20th cen­tury, this and the times haunted Kurt. The lyr­ics and music of Nir­vana described the world of the US Pacific North­w­est: dark with low hanging fog and cloud. This descrip­tion also applies to his life, and the life of many of Generation-X. Cold war, AIDS, unemployment.

The movie, About a Son, is Kurt nar­rat­ing his life in his own words. As cap­tured by bio­grapher, Michael Azer­roth in 25 hours of taped inter­views dur­ing 1992–3. The imagery paints a Wash­ing­ton state that Kurt lived in. A child of his par­ents, age and area.

Using Kurt’s own words, and show­ing the real life Aber­deen, Olympia and Seattle one gets a sense of the angst of Nir­vana. Kurt also talks about his addic­tion via self med­ic­a­tion to opi­ates to escape pain; depres­sion and scoli­osis.

The movie is about an ordin­ary per­son; it human­ises a driven per­son. An com­plex artistic soul that expressed the nihil­ism of my generation.

Most import­antly, Kurt touches the ulti­mate poison that is the cult of celebrity that has only grown in the last 15 years. Espe­cially fight­ing the neg­at­ive narrative.

Any Nir­vana fan or mem­ber of gen­er­a­tion X should see this movie.

Thanks to Pop­cornTaxi for bring this movie to Australia.

Topics: movie, personal, popculture | No Comments »

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