If you’re planning on seeing “Last Days,” Gus Van Sant’s eulogy of Kurt Cobain, do yourself a favor: bring an iPod, a six-pack, an easy date-anything to keep you occupied during its two hours of mumbling, glacier-like crawl. Okay, okay, so it’s not that bad-William Pitt basically is Kurt, right down to his stringy blond locks and thumb-cut sweaters. It’s just that its snail’s pace makes “My Dinner With Andre” seem like “Total Recall” by comparison. C-SPAN Books is roughly 14 times as exciting.

What Van Sant does manage to accomplish, however, is the further canonization of one of the greatest musical figures of the 20th century. Kurt Cobain, even before his tragic suicide and martyr-like apotheosis, was truly the bard of his times. His heartfelt lyrics and conflicted struggle with fame struck a chord with a whole generation of slackers and skeptic Gen X’ers. To this day there’s hardly a better summation of feeling than a line like “I am my own parasite, I don’t need a host to live / We feed off of each other, we can share our endorphins.” Though he died a “rock ‘n’ roll clich‚,” as Van Sant has Sonic Youth’s Kim Gordon say in the film, he’s a clich‚ whose portrait fits nicely in the long line that runs through Dylan, Reed, Costello, Rotten, and Morrissey (ironically, none of which are dead).

Since 1994, Cobain has remained the last scion of that lineage. Sure, recognizable pop stars come a dime a dozen, and it’s quite possible (though shameful) that the average Rolling Stone reader could identify Fred Durst just as easily. But the ’90s and ’00s have yet to produce a legitimate heir to Cobain’s throne, the throne of the artist whose work is incalculably earth-shattering and genre-crossing, and whose genius would have shone through no matter who the band backing them up-no offense, Dave Grohl and Kris Novoselic.

I know where I’m at fault here. I’m giving too much merit to terms like “canon” and “genius” and “Fred Durst” (you can never not be giving Fred Durst too much merit), when in fact such thinking is outdated, chauvinistic, rock fanboy claptrap. Pop music isn’t made by exceptional people, it’s made by the various scenes and movements and environments that produce it. “It’s not made by great men,” as the Gang of Four might say.

As it happens, however, you really can document the number of artists that picked up a guitar because they heard Dylan singing “Like a Rolling Stone,” or Lou Reed doing “Heroin,” or Patti Smith playing “Gloria” at CBGB’s one night-just ask them. Kurt Cobain is no exception to this tradition, although I’m not sure whether to thank him or kidney-punch him for groups like Silverchair and Bush. (No wait, I’m sure.) The only comparable band since has been Radiohead, but notice I say band; nobody’s going to forget Thom Yorke’s pasty, lazy-eyed mug, but he’s simply not an individual force like Kurt. He’s the lead singer of the band Radiohead. (Where have they been for the past three years, anyway?)

Any other contenders? If you squint hard enough, Coldplay’s Chris Martin is Thom Yorke and Bono’s bastard love child, but Martin isn’t rock god material for the same reasons that Bono fails to be. You’re more likely to see him on the cover of “People,” kissing Gwyneth, than anywhere else, just as Bono is probably shaking hands with Desmond Tutu while simultaneously fundraising for the Chronic Bedwetters Fund as you read this. You can admire them for their art and philanthropy (and I do appreciate what Bono has done with his success), but they aren’t tortured, introspective geniuses.

As Van Sant’s tedious film shows, Kurt Cobain is such a genius, still worth thinking about, and probably the last. Will there be another like him? We’re still waiting.

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