KURT AND COURTNEY (1998)
A Film Review by Ted Prigge
Copyright 1999 Ted Prigge
Director: Nick Broomfield
Starring: Nick Broomfield, Hank Harrison, Tom Grant, El Duce, Rozz Rezabak, Kurt Cobain, Courtney Love
Nick Broomfield seems to be in a minority when it comes to the amount of general interest in the subject of his newest documentary. I don't, of course, mean to imply that no one gives a shit about Kurt Cobain and/or Courtney Love and their subsequent relationship that ended in his suicide. I've always wondered exactly why Kurt killed himself, not being satisfied with the mere explanation that he hated fame. No one kills themself for one main reason; there are many many reasons why such things occur, and when this film unearths some of the possibilities of the reasons he killed himself, it's nothing short of interesting. For instance, I was fascinated when I heard from his aunt about her speculations on his death: that Courtney and him each wanted something else, that she was too controlling over him, and that she may have used him. It all sounds eerily like "A Star is Born" to me, and I know I'm not the first to point that out (thank you, Roger Ebert). And I'm not exactly ruling out a possible conspiracy - it's just that by now, any speculation about a possible murder sound goofy and too late in the forming. Once I too was obsessed with conspiracy theories, most notably revolving around one particular case inspired by the viewing of one particular movie many years ago that ended up shaping my initial descent into paranoia of all kinds (and thank you, Oliver Stone). But it's when this film decides at the crossroads, whether it should go to be about the two of them and their relationship or about possible murder theories implicating Courtney heavily to go for the latter that I soon tuned out.
And I grew more distated as the film plowed on from theory to theory, and trying to prove them. Broomfield, who not only made the Spalding Gray film "Monster in a Box" (great flick, mostly due to Gray, of course), but also a little documentary I watched in film class called "Soldier Girls" which is unbelivably interesting, abandons some of the wit and the observation with which he showed in those two films, and it becomes not really about Kurt and Courtney but about Nick Broomfield trying desperately to find anything smutty and/or controversial about Kurt and Courtney. Like a Michael Moore without screen presence or actual real wit, Broomfield travels the country meeting with people who knew them or were associated with them (and in one case, is one of them), in hopes of finding anything at all about them. He shoots interviews so that he's there in the frame, or at least in reaction shots during interviews. He shoots inside the car as he's traveling from place to place. And he comments continuously on the soundtrack about what's going on, what he thinks about his discoveries, and what he would have done with the film if Courtney Love hadn't found out he was making the film and pressured those who funded him (but I really wish he didn't have to explain that every ten minutes).
It's perhaps wrong that Love prevented him from exploring all the possibilities the subject allows, not only for ethical reasons, but really because the film hurts from it. Without a whole lot of funding, Broomfield is only allowed to explore certain things, and it turns out he only has the budget to talk to the cesspool of witnesses, those who no one would touch because they're implausible in any key testimony. Love's father, who wrote two books about Kurt's death and how it may have been a murder maybe by Courtney herself, voices his horrible dislike for Courtney, and in one interview shows that much of his ranting stems from deep emotional and psychological pain aimed at his daughter. Tom Grant, the detective hired by Love to find the missing Cobain in the last days of his life, voices how he thinks he may have been a coverup device, and whose sole proof of this is that Kurt was so high on heroin that he couldn't have held a gun (this is disproven shortly after, shockingly enough by Broomfield himself). An ex-lover of Courtney displays many of her quirks and mannerisms when it comes to fame, broadening our picture of her, then yells into the camera a long, priceless string of insults aimed at her. Weirdest of all, we see an underground punk rocker named El Duce, a man who looks like my perception of Satan, who says that he was hired by Love to kill Cobain but didn't do it (though he has since started haunting my dreams, it's nice to hear that he was later on killed when he stumbled into the path of a train). We meet groupies who knew them, journalists who were threatened by them, and best of all, Kurt's aunt who's the sanest and most plausible witness the film can offer.
Not only does "Kurt and Courtney" get nowhere on the murder rap, it too harshly aims scrutiny in the direction of Courtney, making a vicious but one-dimensional attack at her character. The bad thing about this is: Nick Broomfield fucking hates Courtney Love. Bad thing for a documentary director, since the one surefire thing that should encompass every documentary is that the director has an open mind. Broomfield is willing to explore his subject and opens the evidence he unearths to scrutiny (the detective thing, once again), but underneath the entire film is the subtext that Courtney Love is a bitch, and the entire film doesn't play like an unearthing of their relationship but as a way to demonstrate in what ways she is a horrible individual. The problem with taking a stance like this is that it makes it easier for audiences to take sides with the filmmaker, and while people may buy into Broomfield's vision of Love as a coldhearted, manipulative bitch, we can also see how one-dimensional his argument is. On one hand, Love has threatened journalists and made them scared for their lives...but on the other hand, the journalists were trying to unearth painful secrets to her, and to make her look horrible. When Broomfield himself gets up at a free speech ceremony, where Love has received an award, and makes a speech showing what a hypocrite she is, it's either easy to sympathize with him for not being able to tell his story completely, or with Love for being trashed so much by Broomfield. In fact, we could either symapthize with Broomfield for having his funds cut off (and thus buy into his beliefs), or we could sympathize with Love for trying to thwart the making of this film because if we put ourselves in her position, we wouldn't want some jerk journalist trying to spread bad shit about us either, would we? I always think a documentary should engage us and make us question an issue, but it should never make us question its own belief system.
That said, "Kurt and Courtney" is at the very least intriguing. Some of the issues it digs up, mostly on the relationship between the eponomys couple, are when the film is truly great. Other moments, when it's foolishly trying to prove a part of a conspiracy theory or when it's trying to destroy Courtney Love, or when it's lack of a budget kicks in (there's something about that bit where he tries to sneak into a Hole rehearsal with a video camera only to have the battery die when the door is opened that's eerily reminiscent of "This is Spinal Tap"), are when it's at the very least a "uh huh, whatever" experience. But when it's uncovering interesting aspects of the respective personalities of Kurt and/or Courtney and their fascinating relationship, I could almost ignore the frustrating usage of yellow journalism and annoying presence by pompous ass Nick Broomfield. Well, at least temporarily.
MY RATING (out of 4): **1/2
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