Few approach David Bowie’s legendary status in the cultural imagination, and Moonage Daydream goes to great lengths in its attempt to unpack just what made Bowie such a singular artistic force. The first cinematic work to be authorized by his estate, the film enjoyed unprecedented access to the artist’s personal archives, and its reverence for the material shines through. As vibrant and unusual as its subject, the film is heady stuff, opening with Bowie himself pontificating on Nietzschean philosophy and humanity’s endeavour to fill the God-shaped hole it left behind. Indeed, director Brett Morgen has painstakingly crafted a multi-faceted portrait honouring the complexity of Bowie’s artistic journey, but your average musical biopic, it is not.
Playing out like a sort of psychedelic concert film and interwoven with a mosaic of archival footage, Moonage Daydream draws from a deep well of material to deliver an intricate biography of Bowie’s evolution as an artist, and is refreshingly unconcerned with his personal life… for the most part. The film is bookended by an absolutely stunning set of sequences featuring breathtaking moonscapes set to remixed segments of Bowie’s music. As the lushly realized black and white opening led into a kaleidoscopic explosion of imagery, I found myself wishing I could experience the film in a more fully immersive fashion, like a classic Pink Floyd show at the planetarium (if you catch my drift), though I admit I may be ageing myself.
The first chunk of the film is devoted to Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust era, and revels in his commitment to nonconformity and radical individuality. Ironically, Morgen features a panoply of archived interviews with superfans throughout the period (an absolute goldmine for fashion enthusiasts), most of whom have gone to great pains to look as much like the aforementioned Ziggy Stardust as possible. In any case, it is a great treat to watch Bowie strut his stuff on stage at the height of his creative power, as well as delight in making any number of stuffy television interviewers squirm with his over the top looks, unapologetically philosophical musings, and casual bisexuality (some might scoff at the authenticity of this last assertion, but the fact remains – that was the persona he was selling, and radical at the time).
The next section of the film, which follows Bowie’s evolution from glam rock icon to global multi-media artist, is the one I found most fascinating. Providing an in-depth look into the artistic process – thanks in no small part to Bowie’s own personal archives – Morgen follows Bowie as he travels through America collecting observations and artistic insights, and then settles in West Berlin for the one of the most fruitful periods of his artistic life. Asserting his wish to get down to some serious work, Bowie claims that he chose Berlin as one of the cities that seemed, in his view, to be one of the most “arduous” in the world. In Berlin, alongside Brian Eno, he would go on to experiment with new forms of electronic music, and produce some of the most influential and innovative work of his career. In parallel, Bowie also began to paint, and it is interesting to hear him speak of his reticence to share this work with the public, unsure as he was that it was of sufficient quality. When Morgen follows Bowie’s confessions with a fiery montage of his painted works, it is difficult to believe that anyone could think them unworthy of exhibition.
The final portion of the film addresses Bowie in his true superstar stage, strutting across the globe in beautifully tailored Savile Row suits on the arm of the love of his life, Iman. Even at this stage of his life, Bowie deeply contemplates his own spirituality, tirelessly exploring his own relationship with the universe, which he asserts is the most important questions any of us can ask ourselves. At one point, Bowie states his belief that the artist doesn’t exist as anything other than a figment of people’s imaginations. Perhaps what Morgen’s film really achieves in this film is sketching out not the true image of Bowie, but the Bowie that exists in our collective imagination.
Moonage Daydream is currently streaming on Amazon Primevideo.
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