This career spanning documentary about David Bowie is billed as a cinematic experience and boy is it. It’s highly ambitious. Maybe too ambitious, but pulls it off. No mean feat! Now I love Bowie, I think that’s a popular opinion. A good documentary will pull you in regardless of how you feel about its subject though and this has instant pull. It’s a deep exploration, approved by the estate and I think would be by David himself. I can’t think of any higher praise really. It’s trick is it doesn’t try to dig and explain too much about the man, this is an exploration of art and by extension the man. Bowie was an enigmatic myth and this is a pure celebration of that. Of a man ever changing, an artist who used himself as the canvas throughout his life. If you’re looking for standard talking head stuff, about what colour hair dye Ziggy used then you’ll be disappointed. It’s not that kind of film, but how anyone could be disappointed by Brett Morgan’s film is unfathomable. It’s a dizzying montage of footage. Concert, video, film, newsreel, all gloriously stitched together with the music and Bowie’s words to give something of a in-depth overview of bewilderingly fantastic artist. That’s because he was a fantasy. A construct for people to feed into a feed off of. The strength of this is the way it’s choreographed through different movements. You feel like you’re on a journey with an ebb and flow. Fame, spirituality, sex, escapism, family, transience, work, all with a sense of personal curation. Everything is Bowie’s world feels curated. I’m not sure if he was ever off. If he was awake, he was creating, controlling, experiencing with a genuine warmth. Moonage Daydream is an amazing reflective kaleidoscopic portrait. Flawless.
10/10
