Schnack, who five years ago directed Gigantic (A Tale of Two Johns), the willfully quirky documentary about the quirkily willful band They Might Be Giants, brings a far more somber, elegiac tone to this gently mournful portrait of Pacific Northwest melancholy. It neither helps the film nor hobbles it to know in advance that Cobain, the tortured howler who fronted Seattle grunge linchpin Nirvana, committed suicide on April 8, 1994. It merely swaths it with a gray air of bleak predestination. Despite Schnack’s radical approach to his subject – there are no performance clips and precious few outright blasts of Cobain’s trademark six-string squall – About a Son is hypnotic. Schnack uses judiciously selected, often startlingly beautiful images shot in and around Aberdeen and Seattle, Wash., from a lengthy and angelic helicopter-shot opening sequence to more prosaic (yet no less striking) visuals of the neighborhoods, bars, streets, and huge swaths of forested hillocks that were Cobain’s lifelong touchstone. Atop all this chilly beauty is Cobain’s calm, steady, matter-of-fact voice, talking on and on through the night, about his life, his music, wife Courtney Love and, often, the permanent pains in his back and belly. The combined effect may be a soporific for nonfans, but these interviews, conducted by Michael Azerrad between December 1992 and March 1993, from midnight to dawn at Cobain’s house, are as close to the “real” Cobain as anything outside of his music. About a Son is a poem masquerading as a documentary. One subtextualy powerful sequence, which undercuts shots of a burly, humming lumber mill with music by Queen, is downright genius. Other scenes (and often Cobain’s monologue, too), not so much. This is, I think, a film best watched late at night, at home, with the lights low, while rain patters on the roof. The effect is akin to hanging out with Cobain the confessor, by turns intimate, sweet, annoying, and final.
This article appears in December 14 • 2007.