Moonage Daydream

 

Celebrated documentarian Brett Morgen nearly remakes the musical biography with his virtuosic film of David Bowie's chameleonic career, Moonage Daydream. He certainly raises the bar for the genre.

Morgen wrote, directed and edited this aurally and visually stunning story of a supremely talented man, whose professional life was a phantasm of outrageous personas that fascinated legions of followers while masking insecurities and feelings of isolation. Bowie was so much deeper than all of the rouge and glitter and stacked heels suggested.

Bowie's ever-changing public face, as he describes in thoughtful voice overs throughout the film, was at first a product of his need for attention and personal amusement, but eventually became a necessity to please his fans, who expected surprises from a man who seemed to have a bottomless bag of tricks. Bowie, who died in 2016, makes no apologies for giving his audiences what they wanted.

Morgen weaves through this mesmerizing film passages about Bowie's childhood, his relationship with an older sibling who turned him on to outré writers and musicians -- Kerouac and Coltrane among them -- and frequent references to his need for the creative exploration that defined his 50-year career, during which he released 27 studio albums and scores of live and compilation recordings while also working with other artists.

The film is organized roughly in the order of Bowie's musical output -- one of the main reasons to see the movie -- but Morgen uses several songs as contextual backdrops to offer additional insight and show how Bowie's vision was remarkably consistent. The picture's sound editing and mixing is masterful.

Some fans might point to the absence of any reference to Bowie's marriage to Angela Bowie or to his son, film director Duncan Jones, or to the absence of any voices other than those of the artist himself and the occasional weeping fan who thinks the bloke is "smashing."

But to my mind -- and ear -- Morgen's film accomplishes so much more than your standard celebrity bio-pic despite lacking completeness; it uses all of the tools of modern cinema to capture the essence of an artist who was wholly his own creation, and who, as he admits to an interviewer, used his body as a living canvas.