I just stumbled across Manohla Dargis’ brief, dismissive review of A.J. Schnack’s recent Kurt Cobain documentary, About a Son. I think she’s usually spot-on, but I couldn’t help wondering if she was in a bad mood when she wrote this one, or had some undisclosed issue with Schnack or Nirvana.* True, Kurt Cobain is well-trodden territory, as she points out, but the film doesn’t claim to be any more than it is—which is an occasionally self-conscious but often transfixing visual tone poem out of the Koyaanisquatsi school of filmmaking, depicting the Washington state locales where Cobain once lived, and accompanied by audio footage from interviews Michael Azerrad did with Cobain in ‘92 and ‘93 for his Nirvana book, Come As You Are (as well as a great soundtrack full of Cobain’s sonic inspirations—The Vaselines, The Melvins, Scratch Acid). When I saw the film, Azerrad explained in a post-screening Q+A that the book had been motivated by a desire to set the record straight about Cobain, and that the documentary came from a similar place, since Cobain’s story has become distorted once again in the years since his suicide (I assumed he had Nick Broomfield’s Kurt and Courtney and Gus Van Sant’s Last Days in mind; I shudder to think what kind of story the upcoming Courtney-produced biopic will tell).

Anyway, mission accomplished, I think. I was glad it didn’t editorialize. You hear exactly who Cobain was, that dry disaffected drawl expressing misanthropy, delusion, humor, wisdom, naivete, and exhaustion as he talks about Krist and Dave, Courtney, Frances, heroin, the business, his musical ambitions, his childhood, America. “It’s hard to know who the audience might be for this documentary oddity,” Dargis wrote, and I can answer that: anyone who cared enough about Cobain to want to hear him remember needing to pull over the first time he heard a Nirvana song on the car radio. As someone who was rocked at age 16 by the news that Cobain had killed himself—delivered dispassionately by my father, in our cluttered living room on a cheerful April afternoon—the movie mattered to me.

Bob Dylan’s been in the news more than ever lately**, with Chronicles buzz giving way to No Direction Home buzz giving way to I’m Not There buzz. I couldn’t help thinking of him as I listened to Cobain talk: two monumental pop icons, both deemed voices of their generation, neither of whom wanted the job. One bowed, the other broke. In the movie, Cobain recalls that part of the excitement of falling for Courtney Love was learning how to playact, to be something other than himself when he was with her. Of course, acting has always been an essential part of Dylan’s strategy, as reflected in his life-long gamesmanship with the press and public, in his chameleon-like character changes. That’s why Todd Haynes opted to make I’m Not There an “exploded” biopic, with six Dylans. If Cobain had figured out how to hide his heart away, Dylan-style, maybe he’d still be around. His rawness was his appeal, and his undoing.

Dylan was doubtless the biggest inspiration for Don DeLillo’s 1973 book Great Jones Street, but, probably because I’m from the generation I’m from, I associate the novel with Cobain. Listening to Cobain’s semi-free-associative commentary, delivered at the height of his popularity, late at night and in the depths of Seattle winter, I thought about DeLillo’s Bucky Wunderlick, alone in an unheated, unfurnished room on Great Jones Street, in full retreat from fame and every other aspect of his life. The book isn’t great, but it’s uncanny the way it seemed to anticipate Cobain’s career, and I sometimes think of Kurt Cobain when I find myself on the actual Great Jones Street.

_{*It’s since been pointed out to me that Manohla likes experimentation in narrative filmmaking, but abhors it in nonfiction.
**Update: J. Hoberman has noticed this too.}