Review of Kurt & Courtney (1998) by Adnan B — 30 Aug 2008

Director Bloomfieldâ??s underdog shtick is starting to bug me, but this film is still occasionally fascinating. What struck me most was the vast difference in the personality styles of Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love. Paired together, they perfectly illustrate the dictum that some have fame thrust upon them (Cobain) while others seek it out obsessively (Love).

The world of rocknroll has always valued integrity as highly as any other quality and these two are shown here as the very definition of opposite ends of the spectrum. My favourite moment was hearing that Kurt made Courtney return the Lexus because he thought it too extravagant. But is that, like so many other â??factsâ?? put forward in this film by assorted weirdo acquaintances and conspiracy-mongers, the truth? While itâ??s made plain that Courtney wanted Kurt for his imminent fame, one is left wondering then what he possibly saw in her. Cobain is clearly portrayed as someone who would absolutely loathe Loveâ??s transparently ambitious antics, so why was he with her? Maybe the Courtney in this film is mainly a Bloomfield fiction, created by editing, to make his â??storyâ??.

Maybe one isnâ??t supposed to care anymore about what is the truth in documentaries. Maybe one is just supposed to take the doc like any other flick and go along for the ride. Bloomfield is respected as someone who takes the mickey out of the formal doc by injecting himself, his hopes and fears and successes and failures, right into the film, exploding the myth of objectivity. But he wants to have it both ways. Quite clearly he is making the case, objectively speaking, that Courtney Love is a fame-obsessed psycho, possibly the murderer of her husband, and that her showbiz power has made her paranoid to the point of sabotaging Broomfieldâ??s film about her.

Thatâ??s the Broomfield twist, which brings him his respect, but also his critics. In Broomfieldâ??s documentaries, the story is the story- that is, they are about his attempts to get to the heart of the Big Story, more than they are about the Big Story itself. However, a doc is still a doc, and too often the viewer is all too aware of how Bloomfield has missed getting the Big Story, and this film, like his others, sometimes seems like little more than a Diane Arbus-like look into the characters who inhabit the fringes of fame, and not the central figures.