The problem with committing suicide is your story ceases to become your own, that is unless you left behind a suicide memoir. Once you’re dead, it’s up to everybody else to interpret or reinterpret your life in a way that forms a cohesive image of the person you once were.
For 9 seasons, A&E’s Intervention followed a reliable formula. Introduce the main character, an addict of some kind. Quickly show their present day life as an addict, summarizing the themes of the episode in a quick burst. Follow their life from birth to present day, focusing on their highs and lows with brief summaries of traumas left unmanaged. Jump back to present day to fill in the details of their home life through a lengthier and deeper analysis, with a larger focus on the victims of the addict. Finally, it’s time for intervention where we get the addict to be intervened, shuffled off to their detox, and then a summary card of whether they relapsed.
Brett Morgen’s Montage of Heck follows this formula to a T, minus the intervention. Morgen “introduces” us to Kurt Cobain using an audio montage created by Kurt, footage of Kurt at a concert being wheeled to the microphone before passing out, and friends and family saying that the messages were in the music all the time. Following the brief introduction, Morgen walks us through Kurt’s youth from his parents meeting at a party through his moving to Seattle and forming Nirvana. Morgen then focuses a large portion of Montage of Heck on Nevermind and its aftermath. And, finally we’re caught up to the beginning just so w can watch Kurt self-destruct at home with his wife, Courtney Love, and their daughter, Frances Bean. There is no intervention for Kurt. He dies in the end title cards.
Morgen builds his film using a variety of sources: interviews with friends and family, Kurt’s journal scribblings and art animated into film, completely original animated reenactments, home videos from Kurt’s youth and his home life with Courtney, TV spots, articles, and all sorts of detritus that a celebrity collects in their life. Brett was given free reign over the Cobain estate’s archives, and selects from a wide range of intimate and not-so-intimate details. Morgen tries to make Cobain’s voice override even his own in the retelling of Kurt’s life.
Many parts of Kurt’s past have to be reconstructed using original interviews with Kurt’s closest. Morgen interviews Kurt’s mom, his step-mom (who largely steps in for his father), Krist Novoselic (Dave Grohl is notably missing due to a reported late arriving interview), Kurt’s ex-girlfriend, and Courtney Love. Throughout the first 70 minutes, Morgen manages to keep an even keel on balancing the various voices of the movie. Some people drop in and out (step-mom and dad seem to leave the movie 40 minutes in), but something changes at the 70 minute mark: Courtney Love comes into the picture.
Throughout the second half of the movie, and especially the final act, Brett Morgen hands the reins over to Courtney Love and the tabloid media. This final act may as well be renamed Nancy & Sid. At some point in the post-Nevermind haze, Kurt Cobain drops out from the media tour to hibernate with Courtney Love, marry her, have a baby with her and do heroin. Morgen’s biggest question in the end isn’t anything to do with Cobain, but to ask “Just how much heroin were Kurt and Courtney doing?” He sets up Courtney Love interviews against media articles and home videos showing Kurt with giant pimples and open sores. In Utero was created, but is barely a blip in comparison to Morgen’s heroin home videos. Even after Kurt is hospitalized in Rome on his first suicide attempt, Kurt’s voice is lost to Courtney’s and his mom’s. Not even Novoselic can penetrate this section.
In a way, the structure of Montage of Heck mirrors the typical criticism of Kurt’s life. Prior to Courtney Love, the movie is vibrant, energetic, striking spotlights at the dark soul of Kurt. It has large rings of familiarity and universal truthfulness, exposing the kind of pain and sensitivity that drew a generation of disaffected youth. Once Courtney steps in, however, the movie keeps losing its originality, depending more and more on home videos of Kurt and Courtney as well as trashy tabloid articles focusing on Courtney’s drug use during pregnancy. In Utero seems to just happen, and nothing else really matters.
It’s an easy out and a cheap shot for Morgen. He either didn’t have as much material to mine for this final act, or he chose to focus our attention on the heroin life. He expects the audience to bring the childhood basis into the present day, drawing his youthful suffering to his intense desire for a family, but never quite manages to draw the two together into a heroin addiction. The movie becomes too Courtney-centric that Morgen almost completely loses sight of Cobain.
The first half of Montage of Heck has enough wit, style, and treasure where I can recommend seeing it when you can. But, Morgen completely loses his way in the second half. It’s a problem emblematic of the worst episodes of Intervention, only without the chance for redemption.