Moon­age Day­dream – first-look review

Big-bud­get biopics about musi­cal icons are all the rage these days: think Elvis, Aretha, Elton and Queen, to name but a few. We’ve already had some­one play David Bowie on screen – that would be John­ny Fly­nn, in the offi­cial­ly un-sanc­tioned Star­dust. Here, then, is the big-screen fea­ture the Bowie estate can hap­pi­ly, offi­cial­ly endorse: a wild­ly cre­ative doc­u­men­tary, voiced by the man him­self, that its pro­duc­ers insist is far more.

Writ­ten, direct­ed, edit­ed and pro­duced by Brett Mor­gan (he of The Kid Stays in the Pic­ture and Cobain: Mon­tage of Heck fame), Moon­age Day­dream is an immer­sive, non-lin­ear look at the man var­i­ous­ly known as Zig­gy Star­dust, the Thin White Duke, Major Tom, the Laugh­ing Gnome, Whis­per­ing Jack, Jareth the Gob­lin King, etc. Explor­ing Bowie’s influ­ences, work­ing meth­ods and moti­va­tions, the film is an assault on the sens­es, full of son­ic and visu­al flour­ish­es that adapt and morph Bowie’s music and image from one sequence to another.

Told in a semi-chrono­log­i­cal order – with Zig­gy as the big-bang moment that tops and tails the piece – Morgan’s film is led by Bowie the per­former, with an empha­sis on the star’s ever-elab­o­rate tour­ing shows. Zig­gy fea­tures heav­i­ly through­out, as does Bowie’s Seri­ous Moon­light tour a decade later.

In between are glimpses into trea­sure unearthed from the Bowie archive – from the ​‘Dia­mond Dogs’ and ​‘Stage’ tours, espe­cial­ly, includ­ing home movies and nev­er-before-seen per­for­mances. The whole thing has been restored and remixed for max­i­mum son­ic won­der (for tech heads, that’s 12.0÷5.0 Dol­by Atmos and 7.1÷5.1 sur­round sound). The whole thing, com­plete with mash-ups of all shapes and sizes (fea­tur­ing a flur­ry of his­tor­i­cal archive), looks and sounds glorious.

Like one of Bowie’s most famous sig­na­ture tunes, Mor­gan spent five years (“That’s all we got!”) sort­ing through five mil­lion pieces of archive from Bowie’s pri­vate col­lec­tion (curi­ous­ly, for some­one who sought to be free of pos­ses­sions, Bowie was a com­pul­sive, relent­less hoard­er). It’s a patch­work quilt of a film, with Bowie’s voiceover lift­ed from mul­ti­ple inter­views over the years. Some of these will be famil­iar to those who saw the excel­lent Five Years doc­u­men­tary on the BBC back in 2013.

Run­ning through­out are themes of chaos, iso­la­tion and escape. Giv­en Bowie’s fas­ci­na­tion with space, that means open­ing and clos­ing with hyp­not­ic lunar imagery. Despite its artis­tic focus, though, there are some con­ces­sions to tra­di­tion­al sto­ry­telling. Bowie talks about his con­fused upbring­ing, with his cold moth­er and schiz­o­phrenic half-broth­er, in grim ration-era Britain – and there is, con­verse­ly, a sweet third act fea­tur­ing sec­ond wife Iman to com­plete his nar­ra­tive arc.

Mor­gan first pitched the idea to Bowie (while he was still with us on plan­et earth) as a jour­ney inside’s Bowie’s brain. The result many years lat­er stays true to that idea. By the end, you feel as if you under­stand where the man was com­ing from, what informed much of his work, and why he took many of the cre­ative choic­es he did. Fans of the man will know much of this already, of course, but to the unini­ti­at­ed it will prove ency­clo­pe­dic. It also, curi­ous­ly, keeps the Bowie lega­cy feel­ing current.

There are omis­sions in Morgan’s film, whose voice is sole­ly Bowie’s. There’s an absence of deep cuts in favour of big­ger, bet­ter-known songs. There’s no men­tion of the infa­mous ​‘Tin Machine’ – the Iggy Pop-influ­enced exper­i­ment that fol­lowed ​‘Glass Spi­der’. Iggy him­self doesn’t fea­ture at all, even in pass­ing. Nei­ther does Jag­ger. Nor does Nile Rodgers. But there are visu­al nods to Bowie’s many girl­friends, occa­sion­al boyfriends and oth­er key col­lab­o­ra­tors (Lou Reed and Car­los Alo­mar, for instance) to make up for it.

Giv­en this is an offi­cial Bowie prod­uct, no men­tion is made of the heart attacks (and strokes) that plagued the star’s health in lat­er years, keep­ing him absent from that most sacred of spaces where he tru­ly excelled: the con­cert stage, which this film salutes. Morgan’s film does serve as some­thing of an anti­dote to that: a reminder of the man’s innate abil­i­ty to engage and con­tin­u­al­ly evolve as he cre­at­ed art on his terms for all the kooks and out­siders amongst us. It is a fit­ting trib­ute to a remark­able tal­ent who remains sore­ly missed.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

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