SXSW Film: Daily Reviews and Interviews

This is not a documentary. Schnack's moving film is fine art on celluloid. Images of the Northwest awaken beneath the vibrant, angry voice of Kurt Cobain as he tells his story to music journalist Michael Azerrad. From his childhood in Aberdeen, Wash., to his last days in Seattle, Cobain is open and honest. Intimate tales of a perfect childhood, a painful adolescence, and a constant desire for more make a fractured man out of a god. Schnack (Gigantic: A Tale of Two Johns) floats image on canvas, illustrating the world almost entirely through Cobain's point of view to an excellent soundtrack (Queen, Mudhoney, Scratch Acid) and original score by Steve Fisk and Benjamin Gibbard. "The realization is there was nothing to do," Schnack said of his and Azerrad's subject. "He was on a certain path."