《烦恼的蒙太奇》把科特·柯本送下神坛

With ‘Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck,’ Brett Morgen Demythologizes a Legend

《烦恼的蒙太奇》把科特·柯本送下神坛

Clad in a crimson dress, Courtney Love blew into the Beverly Hills Hotel in March 2007 with a lawyer in tow and Kurt Cobain’s legacy on her mind. For the first time, she wanted to provide a documentary filmmaker with unrestricted access to her dead husband’s archives, including journals, artwork, home movies and more than 100 never-before-heard cassette tapes stashed in a mysterious storage locker.

洛杉矶——2007年3月，身穿红裙的柯妮·拉芙(Courtney Love)心里想着科特·柯本(Kurt Cobain)的遗产，突然来到贝弗利山庄酒店，身后还跟着一个律师。这还是第一次，她打算毫无保留地向一位纪录片制作人提供亡夫的各种资料，包括他的日记、艺术创作、家庭录像和100多份之前从没有人听过的卡带，它们原本静静地隐匿在一个神秘的储物柜里。

And she wanted the unorthodox nonfiction director Brett Morgen, tucked in the booth beside her at the hotel’s Polo Lounge, to take on the project.

她选了不循常理的非虚构影片导演布莱特·摩根(Brett Morgen)，两人来到酒店的波洛厅，他坐在她身边，大口吃着东西。

“It was time to examine this person and humanize him and decanonize these values that he allegedly stood for — the lack of ambition and these ridiculous myths that had been built up around him,” Ms. Love, the actress and musician, said recently by telephone. It would be the first authorized documentary since the Nirvana singer committed suicide in 1994, leaving Ms. Love a widow with a 20-month-old daughter, Frances Bean.

“现在应该好好审视这个人，把他还原为普通人，拿掉那些人们强加给他的价值，那些圣徒的光环——全无野心，以及那些围绕着他编造的可笑神话，”演员兼乐手拉芙女士最近在接受电话采访时说。“涅槃”(Nirvana)乐队的主唱科特·柯本于1994年自杀身亡，留下妻子拉芙与20个月大的女儿弗朗西丝·宾(Frances Bean)，这是他去世后的首部正式授权纪录片。

Shocker: The film did not go smoothly.

令人震惊的是，拍摄过程并不顺利。

Mr. Morgen, whose movies include the celebrated Robert Evans cine-memoir “The Kid Stays in the Picture,” figured a Cobain documentary would take about 18 months. It took eight years — “Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck” arrives in limited theatrical release April 24 — as Mr. Morgen wrestled with an unexpectedly enigmatic subject. Mr. Morgen also had to navigate a mother-daughter legal drama and pick through that storage locker, which turned out to be a gargantuan task. (“It’s totally true,” Ms. Love said. “I’d never gone through any of it.”)

摩根的作品包括广受好评的罗伯特·埃文斯(Robert Evans)电影回忆录——《光影流情》(The Kid Stays in the Picture)，他最初觉得拍一部和柯本有关的纪录片需要18个月。始料未及的是，最后他花了八年时间处理这个谜一样的题材——《科特·柯本：烦恼的蒙太奇》(Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck)将从4月24日开始在部分影院上映。此外，摩根还得应付一出母女关系法律剧，在储物柜中挑选素材也成了一项极为庞大的任务。(“真的是这样，” 拉芙说，“我从来没看过那堆东西。”)

In the end, Mr. Morgen, 46, said he discovered a guy who was “enormously complicated, much more than I ever imagined,” an artist whom the culture had come to misunderstand, or at least confine to a distorted niche.

到最后，46岁的摩根说，他发现了这样一个人，他“非常复杂，比我想像的要复杂得多”，这是一位遭到文化深深误解的艺术家，至少也是被限定在一个扭曲的小范围之内。

“I thought I was going to meet a rock star who got tired of his fame, because that’s the narrative that has settled around him,” Mr. Morgen said. As he dug deeper, “a character started to emerge who I had never met before.” Yes, the romanticized rock-god misery was there: the unwanted spokesman-for-a-generation pressure, the disturbing art and journals, the horrific heroin spiral. “But there was also this loving and funny and warm guy who enjoyed parts of his life,” Mr. Morgen said.

“我本以为自己要拍的是一个厌倦盛名的摇滚明星，因为关于他的叙事都是这样的，”摩根说。但他愈是深入挖掘，就愈觉得“一个之前从未见过的形象开始浮现在我心中”。诚然，被浪漫化的摇滚神祇的悲剧还在这儿：意外成为一代人代言人的压力、令人不安的艺术与日记、可怕的海洛因毒瘾。“但他也同样是一个可爱、有趣、温暖的家伙，自己生活中的有些方面，他还是挺满意的，”摩根说。

The ingrained perception of Cobain as an unambitious, helpless waif overpowered by Ms. Love was “shattered,” Mr. Morgen continued. “On the home movies I saw, Kurt is not meek. Courtney is not dominating him. I think this film is really going to challenge people’s perceptions.”

人们对柯本根深蒂固的看法是：他是个全无野心、内心无助的流浪儿，完全受拉芙压制，摩根说，纪录片“粉碎”了这个观念。“在我看到的家庭录像里，科特一点都不吻合这个形象，柯妮也没有统治他。我觉得这部影片真的会挑战人们的看法。”

In one eye-popping 1992 home video included in the film, Cobain and Ms. Love are seen blissfully living in druggie squalor in Los Angeles. Standing in a towel in the bathroom with shaving cream on his face, Cobain teases Ms. Love about her tabloid image as a man-eating monster. “You and Roseanne,” he says playfully, referring to Roseanne Barr. “You’re tied for the most-hated women in America.” She pretend-pouts.

影片收录了1992年的一段家庭录像，非常让人震惊，柯本和拉芙在洛杉矶，快乐地生活在一片瘾君子的污秽之中。柯本站在厕所的一块毛巾上，脸上还有剃须膏，对拉芙开玩笑，说她在小报上的形象就好像吃男人的怪物。“你和罗西妮，”他开玩笑地说起罗西妮·巴尔(Roseanne Barr)，“你们俩正努力成为全美国最招人恨的女人。”拉芙听了装出生气的样子。

Mr. Morgen said the 108 cassettes he found in a Southern California storage space were the most enlightening. Recorded by Cobain when he was still unknown, the cassettes find the budding musician experimenting on the guitar (singing the Beatles song “And I Love Her,” for instance), talking on the phone, giggling, listening to 1980s pop (Kim Wilde’s “Kids in America”), working on embryonic versions of Nirvana songs (“Polly”) and relating raw stories about his anguished teenage years.

摩根说，他在南加州的储物柜里发现的108盘卡带是最有用的。它们是柯特尚籍籍无名时录下来的，显示出一个崭露头角的音乐家如何用吉他进行试验，比如他唱了“披头士”(Beatles)的《而且我爱她》(And I Love Her);他打电话，咯咯笑，听80年代的流行歌，比如基姆·王尔德(Kim Wilde)的《美国的孩子们》(Kids in America)，那时候他写了几首歌，算得上是后来“涅槃”歌曲的雏形，比如《波丽》(Polly);另外他还讲了一些未经修饰的故事，是关于自己悲惨的青少年岁月。

Cobain was a pack rat, and when he died people started stealing his stuff. Ms. Love had everything that was left, which was a lot, quickly moved into storage facilities. Some of the material had been seen over the years by writers, including Charles R. Cross, whose “Heavier Than Heaven” is regarded as the definitive Cobain biography. But the cassettes Mr. Morgen discovered had apparently never been played. (Asked how it was possible that she had never listened to them, Ms. Love responded, a bit testily, “I’m not going to listen to 108 noise cassettes!”)

柯本是个什么东西都不肯扔的人，他死后，人们开始偷窃他的遗物。但是还剩下了不少，拉芙把这些剩下来的东西都留下来，赶快送到专门存东西的地方。多年来，有些作家看到了这些素材，其中包括《重逾天堂》(Heavier Than Heaven)的作者查尔斯·R·克罗斯(Charles R. Cross)，这本书也被视为为柯本盖棺论定的传记。但是摩根发现的这些卡带显然从来没有人听过(被问到她怎么可能从来没听过这些卡带时，拉芙带点不耐烦地回答，“我可不会去听108盘吵吵闹闹的带子!”)

“Montage of Heck,” which will also arrive on HBO on May 4, emphasizes one audio passage as a crucial window into Cobain’s psyche. In the lengthy recording, Cobain talks about trying to lose his virginity in high school to a “very fat” girl who attended special education classes. When his peers found out, Cobain felt so humiliated that he panicked. “I couldn’t stand the ridicule,” he says on the tape. “So I got high and drunk, and I walked down to the train tracks,” where he lay down, hoping to be killed.

《烦恼的蒙太奇》也将于5月4日在HBO台播放，其中有一段音频，仿佛是通往柯本内心的一扇重要窗口。在这段冗长的录音里，柯本讲了自己在高中和一个上特殊教育班的“非常胖”的女孩在一起，打算结束处子之身，结果被同伴们发现了，柯本觉得非常丢脸，变得惊慌失措。“我受不了他们的奚落，”他在录音中说。“所以我磕了药、喝了酒，然后就沿着铁轨一直走，”后来他躺在铁轨上打算自杀。

“To me, that is the most interesting and revealing piece of media he ever recorded,” Mr. Morgen said. The film connects dots between that moment of teenage despair and Cobain’s suicide, suggesting that humiliation — Cobain suspected Ms. Love of cheating — factored heavily in his end.

“对于我来说，这是他录下来的最有意思、最揭示内心的东西，”摩根说。影片把柯本人生中的一个个点串联起来：青少年时期的绝望与后来的自杀，认为羞辱也是导致他死亡的重要原因之一(柯本曾怀疑拉芙不忠)。

Nirvana fans will undoubtedly regard “Montage of Heck” as mandatory viewing, but some may not like Mr. Morgen’s inferences. What drove Cobain to get high and shoot himself has been endlessly debated for 21 years, with no satisfactory closure, noted Mr. Cross, who was not involved with the film. “Everyone wants to make conclusions that ultimately can’t be made,” he said. “There is no easy answer.”

“涅槃”的歌迷无疑会觉得《烦恼的蒙太奇》是非看不可的，但有些人可能不喜欢摩根的论断。关于柯本为何在吸毒之后开枪自杀，21年来，争论从未平息，克罗斯总结说(他本人并没有参与到这部影片中来)，这个问题从来没有令人满意的结论。“所有人都想下结论，但是根本就没有最终结论，”他说。“这个问题没有简单的答案。”

Most fans, he added, want to write the narrative that Kurt was a victim of his fame. “The truth is that this man was very, very tormented, and he was full of contradiction,” Mr. Cross said. “What part of Kurt do you want to believe? What he wrote in diaries? What he said in interviews? What his friends said?”

他还说，大多数歌迷都希望这个故事是关于科特是被名声所累。“真像是，这个男人非常非常痛苦，他身上充满矛盾，”克罗斯说。“科特身上的哪一部分是你愿意相信的?他在日记里写的?他在访谈里说的?还是他对朋友说的?”

Other viewers may question specific filmmaking decisions. For instance, Krist Novoselic, Nirvana’s bassist, reflects on camera about Cobain, but an interview with Dave Grohl, who played drums and went on to form Foo Fighters, was not included. (Contrary to reports, that interview will not pop up as a DVD extra, Mr. Morgen said.) Mr. Morgen also abruptly ends his movie just before Cobain commits suicide, leaving examination of that event and its aftermath to the highly unauthorized 1998 shock-doc “Kurt & Courtney.”

还有一些观众可能会质疑若干拍摄上的决定。比如说，“涅槃”的贝斯手克里斯·诺沃瑟里克(Krist Novoselic)在片中对着镜头怀念柯本，但“涅槃”的鼓手与“喷火战机”(Foo Fighters)的创建者戴夫·格罗尔(Dave Grohl)的访谈却没有收入片中。摩根解释说，这段访谈将出现在DVD加长版里。而且，影片戛然而止，结束在柯本自杀之前，把关于这件事及其后续事件的审视完全留给1998年未经授权与认可、非常令人震惊的纪录片《科特与柯妮》(Kurt & Courtney)。

“The problem with most biopics is that they try to hit all the beats you see in Wikipedia,” Mr. Morgen said. “You can’t cover everything. That’s what books are for. I think my films are documentaries in the sense that they arrive at a truth. But the word ‘document’ is actually antithetical to art and cinema.” (As it happens, Insight Editions will publish a “Montage of Heck” companion book on May 5. Mr. Morgen has also been working on a soundtrack, but a release — if any — is still undecided.)

“大多数人物传记片的问题是，他们总希望把你能在维基百科里看到的每个点都收进去，”摩根说。“但你不可能面面俱到，那是写书的目标。我希望我的电影是那种走近真相的纪录片，但是‘纪录’这个字眼实际上是和艺术与电影相对立的。”(与此同时，Insight Editions出版社将于5月5日出版一本与影片配套的书，名为《烦恼的蒙太奇》，摩根也在制作一张影片原声专辑，但是否发行尚未决定。)

Even so, Mr. Morgen knows that his film has a stigma to overcome: “Authorized” documentaries are usually hagiography.

尽管如此，摩根也知道自己的影片还要克服一个困难：“授权”纪录片通常会把主人公神圣化。

“It usually means watered down,” Mr. Morgen said. “That’s clearly not the case here.” He said members of Cobain’s family, notably his sister and mother, were uneasy with some material, but it stayed in.

“这样的影片通常都会很平淡，”摩根说。“不过，我们的影片不会。”他说，柯本的家庭成员，特别是他的妹妹和母亲，都对片中某些素材感到不安，但它们还是保留下来了。

In particular, it was difficult for the family to see camcorder video, shot by a family friend, of a sore-covered Cobain — high to the point that he is nodding off — holding his baby daughter while Ms. Love tries to cut her hair. “I think that they just wish that the heroin wasn’t there,” Mr. Morgen said. “And so do I.”

特别是其中这样一段，是朋友拍的，家人看起来会格外难过。镜头中是极度痛苦、微微打着盹的柯本，怀里抱着小女儿，拉芙正试着给她剪头发：“我觉得他们希望他没有染上海洛因毒瘾，”摩根说。“我也是这么希望的。”

Ms. Love had no creative input, Mr. Morgen said, but Frances Cobain, 22, served as an executive producer. Ms. Cobain has held rights to her father’s name and likeness since 2010 as part of a confidential agreement with her mother. Ms. Cobain and Ms. Love have a volatile history, with Ms. Love most recently losing custody of her daughter in 2009.

摩根说，拉芙没有参与到创作过程中，但22岁的弗朗西丝·柯本(Frances Cobain)担任了执行制作人。2010年，弗朗西丝·柯本与母亲达成了一项秘密协议，自此之后，她也拥有父亲的冠名权等权利，她和拉芙之间的关系一度并不稳定，拉芙最近一次失去对女儿的监护权是在2009年。

“Frances wanted an emphasis on the art,” Mr. Morgen said. “She felt that Kurt had been heavily mythologized, and that it was essential to her that he was humanized in the film. It happened that her take was exactly in sync with mine.”

“弗朗西丝希望强调艺术的成分，”摩根说。“她觉得柯本被严重地神化了，她希望在片中能把他还原为普通人，这对她来说很重要。这一点她和我完全一致。”

“Montage of Heck,” named for a mixtape Cobain made in 1988, has been greeted with universal acclaim on the festival circuit. The family also seems pleased. “I love it,” said Ms. Love, who receives a fair amount of humanizing in the film herself. “It’s as honest as it’s ever going to get.” Ms. Cobain declined to comment. In an interview with Rolling Stone, she said, “It’s the closest thing to having Kurt tell his own story in his own words — by his own aesthetic, his own perception of the world.”

《烦恼的蒙太奇》这个名字来自柯本1988年录制的一盘磁带，在电影节展映期间，它赢得了各种好评。柯本的家人似乎也颇为满意。“我喜欢它，”拉芙说，这部影片也在很大程度上把她还原为普通人。“它努力做到了诚实。”弗朗西丝·柯本拒绝发表评论。在接受《滚石》(Rolling Stone)杂志采访时，她说，“这是最接近让科特用他自己的语言讲述他自己的故事的办法，这是他自己的美学，他自己对世界的看法。”

Even though Ms. Love did not know it when she approached him, wrestling with difficult, oversize projects has long been one of Mr. Morgen’s specialties. As a high school student at the Crossroads School in Santa Monica, Calif., he directed as his senior thesis a rock musical adaptation of “The Conformist,” Bernardo Bertolucci’s 1970 political drama, replete with dance sequences. (His classmates Jack Black and Maya Rudolph led the cast.)

拉芙去找摩根的时候还不知道，克服困难、处理极为巨大的题材早就是他的拿手好戏。在加州圣塔莫妮卡的十字路口中学上高中的时候，摩根就曾经执导过自己的毕业作品，一部名为《国教教徒》(The Conformist)的摇滚音乐剧，改编自贝纳多·贝托鲁奇(Bernardo Bertolucci)1970年的政治剧;摩根的作品中还有大量舞蹈，领衔主演的是他的同学杰克·布莱克(Jack Black)与玛雅·鲁道夫(Maya Rudolph)。

Mr. Morgen, who studied American mythology at Hampshire College in Amherst, Mass., has said that people call him the mad scientist of documentary film. It’s partly a reference to his appearance — long, unkempt hair — and manner. “Would you mind if we went to SoulCycle,” he asked me with a penetrating stare as I arrived at his office, referring to the exercise chain, “and you could interview me as we pedal?” Was he serious? Joking? It was hard to tell.

摩根后来在马萨诸塞州阿莫斯特的汉普郡大学攻读美洲神话学，他说人们叫他“纪录片的疯狂科学家”。部分也是因为他的又长又乱的头发，部分是由于他的风格。“你介不介意我们去SoulCycle，”我到办公室时，他目光炯炯地直视着我，SoulCycle是他的健身房。“我们一边踩单车，你一边采访我。”他是认真的还是开玩笑?很难说。

But the nickname mostly comes from his unusual approach to making movies. He is no Ken Burns, who also attended Hampshire. “On the Ropes,” a 1999 look at three young boxers, was a deliberate attempt to make a documentary feel like fiction. Directed with Nanette Burstein, it was nominated for an Oscar for best documentary.

但是这个外号最主要的还是因为他拍片的方式太独特了。著名导演肯·伯恩斯(Ken Burns)也是汉普郡大学的校友，和他的风格可截然不同。1999年，摩根与纳内特·伯斯坦(Nanette Burstein)联合执导了《拳击少年》(On the Ropes)，讲述三个年轻的拳击手的故事，影片刻意让纪录片有虚构影片的风格，它获得奥斯卡最佳纪录片奖提名。

“The Kid Stays in the Picture,” also directed with Ms. Burstein, again pushed the form. “Kid” told the story of the flamboyant producer Mr. Evans from one point of view — his — using motion graphics and other untraditional visual tricks. Mr. Morgen tried an animated documentary in 2007 with “Chicago 10,” about the antiwar protesters put on trial following the 1968 Democratic National Convention.

《光影流情》也是和伯斯坦联合执导的，再一次挑战了纪录片的形式。该片从风格夸张的电影制作人埃文斯自己的的角度讲述了他的故事，使用了动画等非传统的视觉手段。2007年，摩根还尝试了动画纪录片《芝加哥10》(Chicago 10)，讲述反战示威者在1968年民主党全国大会之后遭受审判的故事。

“Montage of Heck” uses all of those tools. Cobain’s journals are brought to life with animation. Parts of the film are in essence music videos, with sharp-edged Nirvana songs playing against photos of Cobain as a sweet little boy. When Cobain’s chronic stomach ailments are discussed, Mr. Morgen’s camera appears to zoom inside bubbling human intestines.

《烦恼的蒙太奇》把这些手段都用上了。柯本的日记被拍成了动画，影片有一部分其实就像音乐录像，有风格鲜明的“涅槃”歌曲，伴随着柯本小时候的可爱照片。谈到柯本的慢性胃病时，摩根的镜头好像慢慢摇到翻涌胃液的内脏中去。

“Brett is unique in his presentation of the psychology of his characters,” said Sheila Nevins, the president of HBO Documentary Films. “His films are almost like abstract paintings. In this one, you feel the pain in the stomach of Kurt Cobain. You feel the talent. You feel the anger.”

“布莱特在呈现人物的心理状态方面非常独特，”HBO台纪录片部总监谢拉·内文斯(Sheila Nevins)说。“他的影片简直就像抽象画。在这部影片里，你能感受到科特·柯本剧烈的胃痛，也能感受到他的天赋与愤怒。”

Ms. Nevins described Mr. Morgen as a bit of a tortured artist himself. “I don’t think Brett ever really feels that he has done a great job on anything,” she said.

内文斯说，摩根自己也是备受痛苦的艺术家。“我就觉得布莱特从来不觉得自己有什么事做得特别好，”她说。