Film review: ‘Soaked In Bleach’


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There’s been a lot of talk this year about Kurt Cobain.

Primarily because of the Montage Of Heck documentary, which examined his life in a detail of the kind that had never been seen before.

Much less publicised, but examining his death in just as much detail, is Soaked in Bleach, which in some respects could be viewed as an addendum far more important than just one more brick in the myth-building of the man, as the former no doubt is.

Or it could be viewed simply as the obsessions of a private investigator called Tom Grant (‘the name Kurt Cobain goes through my head at least 300 or 400 times a day’), who has nothing better to do other than imply that one of the world’s biggest rock stars didn’t commit suicide, was in fact murdered, and Courtney Love had something to do with it.

Soaked In Bleach re-enacts the events leading up to Cobain’s death from the perspective of Grant, even when he wasn’t there, making use of actual audio recordings between himself and significant others, including Love, which are surprisingly revealing.

Even so, one is left feeling like they’ve stumbled upon a tawdry late-night film noir on Channel 5. All this is weaved together with interviews from Cobain’s hometown friends along with legal and medical professionals — the former of which add little to the story, the latter of which back up Grant’s controversial assertions.

Grant is keen to convince the probity of his character – his father never told lies, so why would he? — and appears ingenuous despite temptations to judge him as someone trying hard to make a living out of a dead man’s fame. But the documentary does have a habit of falling victim to its own gravitas, and often. The sombre filter on the camera, the chiaroscuro, the downbeat score and incessant rain on the window during certain interviews whorl together to make the whole experience a depressing one.

The real hub of the film begins about halfway in; namely, the alleged level of incapacitating heroin in his body, the ballistics of the bullet, the suspicious handwriting on the suicide note and, to a lesser, sinister extent, the negligence of the police and media misinformation at the time.

It must be said that all the evidence shown does beg seemingly valid questions which may leave viewers wondering, ‘What if?’. If only the director could banish or at least reduce the cheap dramatisations, particularly the depiction of a felo-de-se bound Cobain at the end that should be left to un-entertaining films like Last Days ten years ago, then it might get past the tocsin of a sensationalist conspiracy theory at play.



Courtney Love is an easy, perhaps misunderstood, target for the media and the entire 90 minutes is as much a diatribe against her as it is a ‘search for justice’ in the name of Cobain. She is all but called responsible for his murder, along with implications against his best friend and his daughter’s nanny.

It’s one man’s word against a much more powerful (read rich and famous) woman, but it’s enough to have warranted a response from Love’s lawyers over its allegations, and one wonders how much of a gadfly Grant has now become for her after she’d originally hired him to help find a missing Cobain in the days leading up to his death.

The hope of this documentary, in its final minutes, is to reopen the police investigation but, as much as it tries, there is probably more chance of Nirvana getting back together.

Out of plain skullduggery curiosity though, it’s at least worth a watch.

(Steven White)


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