How many movies do we need to see about Kurt Cobain? We’ve already had Nick Broomfield’s high-larious conspiracy theory-cum-documentary “Kurt and Courtney” (in which El Duce of the Mentors claims to have been offered $50,000 by Courtney to whack Kurt). Then there was Gus Van Sant’s 2005 meditation “Last Days,” which plays out in excruciating detail, what the last few hours in Kurt’s life may have been like. And the latest offering about the Nineties’ most influential musician is “Kurt Cobain: About a Son,” which was directed by AJ Schnack. “About a Son” is based around 25 hours of interviews recorded by author Michael Azerrad for his Cobain biography “Come As You Are” (and whose previous tome “Our Band Could Be Your Life” is essential indie rock reading), and the two met when Schnack interviewed him for his previous film, a first-rate documentary on They Might Be Giants called “Gigantic.”

Though Azerrad has kept a tight lid on the interviews over the years, they don’t provide a ton of new information not already contained in the pair of biographies written about Kurt (the other being “Heavier than Heaven“). Accompanying Kurt’s voice in the film are a series of images from the three Washington cities that loomed largest in his life: Aberdeen, Olympia and Seattle. Schnack says he found a lot of inspiration for the film’s visual look from Godfrey Reggio’s “Koyaanisqatsi,” and a typical sequence might have Cobain telling a story about the lumber mill his father worked at with images of forklifts moving logs around, still shots of wood-paneled offices, and beautifully composed portraits of the mill’s employees.

The film feels a lot like a series of music videos, which makes sense since Schnack got his start directing them, and there’s a ton of music in the film, though none from Nirvana. The idea behind the soundtrack, as Schnack explained in the post-screening Q&A, was to have the music of Kurt’s life aid in the film’s narration. As Kurt tells his story, we hear the bands he was discovering at that point in his life. The soundtrack includes music by Bad Brains, David Bowie, and Iggy Pop amongst others, all of whom generously lent music to the project for a fraction of their normal licensing fees. The film was also scored by a pair of notable Seattle musicians, record producer Steve Fisk and Death Cab for Cutie’s Ben Gibbard, who joked that he’d always wanted to score a movie, and technically still hadn’t since the duo composed to the edited audio recordings rather than the film’s visuals since they weren’t yet completed. The film also has a slew of classic black and white Cobain photos from grunge documentarian Charles Peterson.

Ultimately, “About a Son” has a great pedigree, and despite having no official ties to Cobain’s estate, the film handles the sensitive subject matter delicately and respectfully. As an experimental documentary with no traditional narrative structure, the film is admirable. To get maximum enjoyment from the film however, you have to surrender to it’s ways and let its collage of sound and images wash over you. There are long ponderous moments, and filmgoers hoping for a “Behind the Music” style rock doc will likely be disappointed, but the film is a fitting visual interpretation to the candid Azerrad interviews.

See a segment of the film below:

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