Brett Morgen's "Moonage Daydream" is a highly selective, fawning portrait of seminal rock artist David Bowie. Its sheer length, the fact that it is told almost entirely in Bowie's own words, and was authorized by his estate, suggest it should be the last word on the subject. Instead what we get is a cinematic personal essay both windy and frenetic, the Bowie Gospel According to Morgen. While many of Bowie's pronouncements are useful and enlightening, it's also useful to remember that Bowie was always, to use a literary term, an unreliable narrator who changed his positions as often as he changed his wardrobe. The film does not shy entirely away from this, limning Bowie's seesaw craving for both fame and artistic credibility from episode to episode. Well, he achieved both, bless him.
The movie feels obliged to do a lot of heavy lifting, visually, to jazz up now ancient analog imagery through effects and shreddy editing. There are some respites from the assault, like passages of Bowie's solitary wandering through Southeast Asia, looking contemplative and anonymous -- until one reflects that he's being followed around by a bloody film crew. The public Bowie was always striving for effect, or affect, which Morgen totally buys into. Tellingly, there's no non-music video footage of Bowie in his late, turn of the century period when he finally seemed at ease in his own skin.
Though Bowie was clearly brilliant in his own right, he always thrived on collaboration with other musicians and producers. Aside from name-checking Brian Eno, the master's other collaborators are reduced to fleeting images at best. In the climax of the performance of the titular track, rather than cutting to Mick Ronson -- who was as crucial to the Ziggy era as Eno was to the Berlin -- playing his ferocious guitar solo as in the original Pennebaker film, Morgen cuts from Bowie to his rapt fans. The focus is relentless, and after two hours even diehard fans might have enough of gazing into their star(man)'s mismatched pupils.
A surprising amount of time is devoted to Bowie's painting, as if an artist must be visual to be validated. Bowie himself admitted he was a more confident writer than a painter, yet that is only obliquely referenced through the soundtrack. As there is no footage of pre-Ziggy Bowie, it was gratifying to hear music from the brilliant "Hunky Dory" and earlier. It was a happy shock to hear the obscure but epochal (for me anyway) "Cygnet Committee" figure so prominently.
So this is not the definitive word on David Bowie, a figure so complex that no single retrospective would likely do him justice. The film's fatal flaw is that it is too long. While Bowie deserves more, Morgen rates less.
The movie feels obliged to do a lot of heavy lifting, visually, to jazz up now ancient analog imagery through effects and shreddy editing. There are some respites from the assault, like passages of Bowie's solitary wandering through Southeast Asia, looking contemplative and anonymous -- until one reflects that he's being followed around by a bloody film crew. The public Bowie was always striving for effect, or affect, which Morgen totally buys into. Tellingly, there's no non-music video footage of Bowie in his late, turn of the century period when he finally seemed at ease in his own skin.
Though Bowie was clearly brilliant in his own right, he always thrived on collaboration with other musicians and producers. Aside from name-checking Brian Eno, the master's other collaborators are reduced to fleeting images at best. In the climax of the performance of the titular track, rather than cutting to Mick Ronson -- who was as crucial to the Ziggy era as Eno was to the Berlin -- playing his ferocious guitar solo as in the original Pennebaker film, Morgen cuts from Bowie to his rapt fans. The focus is relentless, and after two hours even diehard fans might have enough of gazing into their star(man)'s mismatched pupils.
A surprising amount of time is devoted to Bowie's painting, as if an artist must be visual to be validated. Bowie himself admitted he was a more confident writer than a painter, yet that is only obliquely referenced through the soundtrack. As there is no footage of pre-Ziggy Bowie, it was gratifying to hear music from the brilliant "Hunky Dory" and earlier. It was a happy shock to hear the obscure but epochal (for me anyway) "Cygnet Committee" figure so prominently.
So this is not the definitive word on David Bowie, a figure so complex that no single retrospective would likely do him justice. The film's fatal flaw is that it is too long. While Bowie deserves more, Morgen rates less.