Even without his unfortunate end, Kurt Cobain would have been a rock legend just for Nirvana's amazing rock hat trick of Bleach, Nevermind, and In Utero. The importance of Nirvana to the history of music can't be understated. When Nevermind broke, the world of music was awash in a sea of boy bands and hair metal. Kurt was like Noah, and we were all going to escape the doldrums of pop music on his ark of rock. Eddie Vedder and Chris Cornell jumped aboard and rode the waves with Kurt, but The New Kids on the Block and Cinderella were left to float facedown in the surf. (We need another Kurt today almost as much as we did back when Nevermind was released, proving that even a sea change can be reversed.) But the sad fact that Kurt killed himself at the peak of his influence and fame has, oddly enough, made him an even more crucial part of rock history. Now, writers and fans are left to not only to try and discover what made Kurt so good at what he did, but also why he choose to take the easy exit. Pages and pages have been written about Cobain and movies ranging from Kurt and Courtney to Last Days have been filmed in, some might say, vain attempts to allow us a window into Kurt's troubled soul. That window is still fogged and hard to see through, but the new documentary Kurt Cobain: About a Son offers perhaps the best look yet into his legacy and, in a daring move, features not a single Nirvana song or image of Kurt until the very end.

Director AJ Schnack (the man behind the excellent Gigantic, a documentary about They Might Be Giants) approaches the story of Kurt Cobain the same way the musician approached music, from a slightly skewed angle. About a Son is made up entirely of a series of extensive interviews that Kurt did with writer Michael Azarrad for his book, Come As You Are: The Story of Nirvana. The catch is - these were phone interviews. There are not a lot of people who would look at tapes of phone interviews and think "documentary!", but Schnack takes an audacious approach to the material which really pays off. Throughout the film, we hear Kurt's life narrated in his own words as we watch modern-day images of the places that Kurt is either talking about or where he might have been had he not killed himself. For example, when Kurt speaks about growing up in Olympia, we see the town's current citizens living their lives, shots of cars driving through the streets, and the occasional piece of animation. You never see Kurt's face until the very end, where it has an impact that's much stronger than you'd expect. And, as the fallen star speaks, we hear the music - everything from Queen to Bruce Springsteen - that Kurt claims inspired him to become a rock star.

The tone, style, and daring conceptual choices made by Schnack throughout make About a Son definitely worth your time, regardless if you're a Kurt Cobain fan or not. However, the film is ultimately held back from true rock documentary greatness by something that the filmmakers couldn't possibly control - Cobain himself. Kurt opens by saying he's not really that interesting, that his life is actually pretty boring, and then attempts to prove that statement again and again during the interviews. He's also amazingly unwilling to deal with the consequences of his own decisions, blaming his parents, bandmates, journalists, and basically everyone else for all the miseries of his life, never once taking credit for his own actions. He's a fantastic musician, but, as an interviewee, Cobain is frustratingly whiny. All of that - his loathing of everyone but Courtney and Francis Bean, the whining, and his commitment to being "boring" - are interesting ideas in themselves (maybe those are the elements that make a true rock star), but they don't make for the most riveting cinema. At the end of the day, About a Son is an excellent film interpretation of a somewhat average interview.

The fact is we probably know all we ever will about the life and death of Kurt Cobain. About a Son allows the fans that the legendary musician will keep gathering for decades to come a brief look inside Cobain's troubled mind, and it does so in a refreshingly bold and innovative way. Music fans shouldn't miss it.