Cobain: Montage of Heck

An exhaustive, haunting but suitably punk-rock hagiography of Kurt Cobain, doomed leader of US grunge superstars Nirvana, who sold 100 million records worldwide. It's a chronological telling of the frontman's foreshortened, 27-year life story from peripatetic Pacific Northwest childhood to suicide, via international superstardom and was made with the full co-operation of his estate - his daughter, Frances Bean Cobain, is an executive producer. There's frank testimony from other family members, too. Imaginative director Brett Morgen (The Kid Stays in the Picture) artfully mixes these interviews with eerily carefree Super-8 home movies, ironic stock footage, clips of unseen gigs and fastidious archive (like a baby's hospital wristband and scribbled sums from the band's early days). Animators Stefan Nadelman and Hisko Hulsing also bring Cobain's endless notebooks to dazzling, disturbing life, as well as exquisitely illustrating spoken word passages. Though the abrasively primal music (often heard in rough live, or demo form) may not be to everybody's taste, the casual observer ought to be convinced of Cobain's innate creative talent and the tragedy of his demise at the end of a long film that reaches far beyond easy fan-bait.