The heavily-anticipated and first ever authorized documentary about the late grunge band Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain was screened at the Wisconsin Film Festival on Saturday, April 11 to a sea of nostalgic baby boomers and Generation X-ers and a handful of hip Millennials.

The arresting title, “Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck” (which lends its name from a mix tape Kurt made before he was famous around 1986) has been on the cultural radar since 2007 when Kurt’s wife, Courtney Love, approached director Brett Morgen and, along with daughter Frances Bean Cobain (also an executive producer), gave him unrestricted access to the family archives. With the release of the trailer this March came a steep promise: this would be the most intimate portrait of an icon to date.

The first 20 minutes or so of the film dives into the political and cultural context of the time Kurt was born (1967) and a brief examination of the relationship of his parents, Wendy Elizabeth and Donald Leland Cobain.

The baby photos made the audience smile. The home footage of toddler Kurt strumming his toy guitar had us all laughing. But by the time we were hearing Kurt’s tender teenage memories narrated in his own voice and brought to life by vivid animation, it was apparent that this really would be the definitive Kurt documentary.

We don’t just see the isolation he felt from being rejected by most of his family members, we hear it and feel it. We delve deep into his teen angst and humiliation. His failed train track suicide attempt at age 15 was one of the most ominous parts of the entire film.

We follow Kurt through the rise and explosion of his career up until the very end by virtue of his own art.  Journal entries and interviews with the people who knew him best were all woven together by explosive graphics and Nirvana tracks. The last 20-25 minutes, while the most invasive, were also the most illuminating.

We see Kurt’s home life with Courtney and Frances, completely away from the limelight, the stage, and even his band mates. We see the goofy, defensive, naked Kurt. The one who was madly in love with Courtney, the one strung out on heroin and nodding off while holding baby Frances.

“Montage of Heck” is an absolute must-see for anyone who considers themselves a Nirvana fan. It is a stunning montage of unadulterated emotion, and a portal into Kurt’s psyche, both blinding in its beauty and crippling in its complexity. I, like many fans before me, have devoured the “With the Lights Out” box set, scoured the scrawls in his journals and parsed every last line of every interview on YouTube.

But it is only after viewing this documentary; this ethereal, often ugly, but ultimately honest portrait of a son, brother, husband and father, that I realize that everything I’ve seen up until now has been merely smoke and mirrors. This is the one piece, the final piece, of the Kurt puzzle that fans have been waiting for without even knowing it.

As Frances recently said in a Rolling Stone interview, “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.” Among dismantling the myths and legends that have thus far dominated Kurt’s story, Morgen told Rolling Stone that one of his main goals was to, “give Frances a couple of hours with her dad.”

Though many people trickled out once the credits started rolling, the truly loyal (or lazy) fans who stayed until the end who got to hear the anthemic “Smells Like Teen Spirit” stripped down to just the vocals, leaving Kurt’s infamous and impassioned screams to thrash and echo violently against the walls of the theatre. The last of those screams faded out as the screen dimmed to black, and the room sat engulfed in Kurt’s unmistakable spirit and a poignant, radio silence

“Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck” will be released in theatres in New York City, Los Angeles and Seattle on April 24 and make its TV premiere on HBO on May 4. A companion book by the same title is available for pre-order on Amazon and will be available for purchase on May 5.