An icon of music, performance art, and fashion, David Bowie dazzled audiences for more than 50 years before his death in 2016. He was a rock god, a queer icon, an '80s-era sellout, a mystical mime, an adoring husband, a sage of showmanship, and still more. Undoubtedly, documentarian Brett Morgen had a Herculean task ahead of him in order to condense the life and legacy of a man of many personas into the feature-length film Moonage Daydream. However, if you're expecting this music doc to play the standards of the subgenre, you're in for a rude awakening.
Morgen boldly dives into the psychedelic, less concerned with making a movie than molding an experience. Be warned: Your mileage may vary.
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Credit: NeonForget talking-head interviews or an opening sizzle reel that swiftly lays down the Cliffs Notes of David Bowie. The documentarian behind the Oscar-nominated sports doc On The Ropesand the devilishly entertaining showbiz doc The Kid Stays In the Pictureisn't interested in allowing others to speak for the glam rock deity.
The film is flooded with Bowie's voice, which changes over the years, growing lower and more relaxed as he ages. Moonage Daydreampulls from an array of archival sources, including video and audio interviews, to expose audiences to the mind and spirituality of Bowie. Clips from talk shows are intercut with concert footage, where fans are entranced by his bedazzled body suits and raw sexual allure. However, these building blocks of a biographical documentary aren't assembled in a row. As teased in the trailer for Moonage Daydream, stock photos are splashed with violent colors. Trippy swirls play over audio clips and Bowie songs alike. Perhaps cynically, I was reminded of theiTunes music visualizer, which pulses in unpredictable patterns and colors to whatever mp3 your computer plays. It's pretty, sure, but I wouldn't call it deep.
Credit: NeonIf you're coming to Morgen's latest looking to learn about Bowie's highs and lows, you'll be disappointed. The film is uninterested in specificity, askewing title cards and gliding through the decades of Bowie's career with plenty of visual flare but few firmly presented facts. Among its omissions is Bowie's first wife, making his later romance with Iman seem more pure and fated. Controversies aren't covered or are covered up by a clamorous sound mix that implies drama without divulging details.
There is more or less a forward trajectory from his glitter make-up early days to his elegiac final album. However, along a slippery timeline of Bowie musing over his "hodgepodge philosophy," his passion for painting, and his evolving musings on the nature of art, there's little to grab onto. If you don't already know the steps of his story, you'll likely be lost along the way.
Credit: NeonYou know the emerging trend of immersive art exhibits? The paintings of the likes of van Gogh and Klimt are re-imagined in a 3D space, perfect for Instagram selfies. Glittering and in motion, their long-ago brush strokes become interactive as they are projected across massive walls, surrounding the viewer in masterpieces come alive. This is what Morgen seems to strive for with Moonage Daydream, and I do admire his apparent ambition.
To support Morgen's vision, indie distributor NEON is releasing the film at the Toronto International Film Festival and in a limited theatrical run exclusively in IMAX. The cosmic candy-colored treatments of Bowie's archival footage is meant to be displayed massively, swirling before the audience as if to envelop them. The soundscape, crashing waves of Bowie's interviews and music with a rat-a-tat-tat of sputtering gears might well intoxicate, urging you away from the concreteness of common bio docs in favor of something purposefully more ethereal and inexplicable.
At first, I was elated to be caught up in this powerful swell. The music played so loudly that I could feel it vibrating my ribcage to the beat. Ziggy Stardust's songs playfully threatened to shatter me into the ether, and it was divine. The concert footage transported me to a time before my own, where I might be thrust into a crowd of glittering British youths, faces beaming, hearts open. A moonage daydream come true!
However, as Morgen proceeds, he veers away from such cathartic concert footage to moody re-enactments, muddled montages, and a barrage of film clips, ranging from Nosferatuand The Wizard of Ozto Labyrinth. One might extrapolate that Morgen is connecting Bowie's influences to the artist's own works to illustrate a continuum of imagination and daring. But long before the 134-minute runtime drew to a close, I had grown tired of the movie's mystical meandering and ambiguous allusions to familiar rock history.
Perhaps the problem was I didn't see this in IMAX at all, but in a small theater. Perhaps, like the trippy films of Stanley Kubrick or the music of the free-love '70s, Moonage Daydreamis best experienced while intoxicated. Perhaps my expectation to learn more about Bowie over being immersed in his general vibes was an impenetrable barrier to this cinematic interaction. For my part, I struggled to find the flow of the film, as it swerves from young and old Bowie voices and scampers past darkness to revel in more pulsing collisions of chaotic color and sound. For me, the enthrallment died long before the film's final curtain, and I was left feeling disconnected by Morgen's indulgences.
Following its North American Premiere at the 2022 Toronto International Film Festival in the Special Presentations slate, Moonage Daydream begins a special engagement exclusively in IMAX theaters beginning Sept. 16.
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