It's hard to believe that a film could be made about Kurt Cobain that would have something of value to add to his already over-mythologized life and death, but "Kurt Cobain About a Son" is just that film, as important for what it reveals about a seminal and grievously misunderstood artist as for how it rejuvenates a moribund documentary form.

AJ Schnack, working with 25 hours of interviews conducted in 1992 and 1993 by Michael Azerrad for his Nirvana book "Come as You Are," has made something beautiful, poetic and honest in "About a Son," a film narrated by Cobain himself as he shares with Azerrad his happy years growing up in Aberdeen, Wash.; his natural affinity for art and music; his early ambition (and abiding love of a slick pop hook); and finally the paralyzing stomach pain that he claimed drove him to self-medication with heroin. Continually throughout these candid, if self-serving, monologues, Cobain, who died in 1994, returns to the primal wound of his life: his parents' divorce when he was 8, which brought his childhood idyll to a sudden and searing end.

As Cobain speaks, gorgeous images of Aberdeen -- as well as Olympia and Seattle, where Cobain eventually lived -- play across the screen, while the music that influenced him (Queen, Mudhoney, Scratch Acid) makes up a soundtrack that doesn't feature one Nirvana song. The result is a film exponentially more vivid and absorbing than the garden-variety rock-doc or biopic. "About a Son" is a must for anyone who still loves Cobain, or still has hope for cinematic portraiture.

-- Ann Hornaday (Oct. 26, 2007)

Contains profanity, brief nudity and material concerning drug use.