As a fan of Nirvana’s music I resent this documentary. It will elsewhere be described as experimental; that’s just desperation being dressed up as innovation. More importantly it is incorrect. Kurt Cobain: About a Son features sonorous taped interviews with the titular subject riffing on any and every topic, mostly discussing his upbringing and his interest in creative pursuits. The movie plays out with footage of Cobain’s hometown – and if there’s a more depressing place on this earth than Aberdeen, Scotland, it is quite clearly Aberdeen, Seattle – while the taped interviews play, sans real context, in and around pointless shots of hometown folk and guitar shops. Sure, we get the sense of this grey, bleak, industrial shipping town. But we know that already. To call that innovative is to suggest that every “unauthorised” classic-albums documentary rip-off is cutting-edge; this is in fact the most formulaic way to make a movie when you don’t have consent. Sure, Courtenay Love is a cow for so heavily protecting the rights to the music, but John Fogerty’s ‘Fortunate Son’ is not a decent replacement soundtrack, even though it is obviously overreaching in the irony stakes.

Nirvana was a great band, they made simple music – and did it well. Much like the Pixies; another band that are also not interesting as people or musicians – as last year’s documentary film loudQUIETloud more than proved. But if you’re a fan (as I am of both Nirvana and Pixies) you are left with no option but to check these movies out; it feels like we could be opening the door to a new discovery. But no, it’s a revolving door in an empty glass tower – lofty ideals, totally transparent, everyone has been there before, sussed out what they need to know. This movie won’t even introduce Cobain correctly to the generation who don’t understand him (and already have nu-metal and emo to explain to the world – if not to themselves) because Cobain comes across, however lucidly, as a whining git. And I’m sure that’s what he was. He wrote good songs though. Stick with the albums.—Simon Sweetman