Music

The trailer for the new Kurt Cobain documentary might make you cry

by Mark Teo

A few days ago, we reported that Montage of Heck, the Kurt Cobain documentary that was approved by his remaining family, would feature an unreleased, 12-minute track from the singer. The film, which was directed by Brett Morgen and features Frances Bean Cobain as its executive producer, has been making its way around the film-festival circuit, and thus far, it’s received wonderful reviews: At Sundance, it was called definitive. Culled from Cobain’s family archives, the film, says the Hollywood Reporter, helps build the singer not just as a person, but as an artist. His mother, Wendy, Courtney Love, and his Nirvana bandmates all make appearances, and, says The Guardian, the portrait they help paint is actually funny. Who knew?

Now, Montage of Heck leaked a trailer for the film, and we have another adjective for it: Crushing. In the two-minute teaser, Morgen’s film already seems to twist numerous narratives, blending his origins as a social outcast, to his ascension to being music’s biggest star, to the formation of his own family—one which rejected to brokenness of his own upbringing. It’s easy to see how they’re building Cobain a complex character, and mood is set through animations and interpretations of Nirvana songs—it opens, for example, on a lullabied rendition of “All Apologies.”

None of these things seem tragic on their own. The tragic part is that we know how it all ends. Watch the trailer for Montage of Heck below.