Herald rating: * * * *
Smells like teen spirit? Maybe. Gus Van Sant's take on the final hours of his mate Kurt Cobain chronicles a meandering, despairing, dull descent out of Nirvana.
Michael Pitt plays a rock star named Blake (we never hear his forename, but odds-on it's Bill)
who has the haircut, clothes, sunglasses, sneakers, the notebook ever at hand - cliches of the grunge star who blew his brains out in 1994 aged 27.
The heroin-addicted singer hides in his once-elegant, now crumbling stone mansion in a brooding forest. Crumbling and brooding himself, he avoids human contact, killing time, listening as people call him or call on him.
Kim Gordon of Sonic Youth plays a record company exec who tries to pull him back into the real world: "Do you talk to your daughter?" His wife sends a private detective who cannot find Blake - he's hiding in the forest (so much for the "Courtney done it" conspiracy - Van Sant was around at the time).
A songwriter wants his help. A Yellow Pages salesman tries to sell him an ad. Two Mormons arrive at the door.
Van Sant repeats the time-travelling tricks of Elephant, his recent film about the Columbine massacre, sometimes flicking backwards, sometimes filling in the gaps from earlier, unfinished scenes.
We know how it will come out as we see Blake playing with his gun. We don't see the event, but we do see the musician in a pose that re-creates the photos of Cobain.
The DVD features full-frame and widescreen options, Pitt's band Pagoda performing Happy Song from the soundtrack, a behind-the-scenes feature, and one deleted scene.
Van Sant fans will enjoy the 20-minute making-of, in which producer Dany Wolf, director of photography Harris Savides and the cast discuss his methods.
* Dvd, video rental today
