Brett Morgen's film about David Bowie - you couldn't call it a bio-pic - very much reflects the artist himself. It's individual, unconventional and imaginative, like Bowie himself.
But was it insightful, revealing or at a basic level entertaining? I wasn't bored by it but in some respects I think he missed the essence of Bowie. For one thing, apart from one reference to Brian Eno obviously around the time of his so-called Berlin Trilogy, there's no reference to any other musical partnerships or collaborations he made in his long career, nothing about Tony Visconti, Mick Ronson or Iggy Pop never mind one-shots with Lennon, Jagger or Queen to name but three, Tin Machine apparently didn't exist.
One is impressed, indeed often amazed at the different video images of Bowie presented here. Sure there's lots of concert stuff and big chunks are taken from well-known interviews with Russell Harty and Dick Cavett and the BBC's "Cracked Actor" film of the mid-70's but the images of Bowie walking through a deserted Japanese shopping centre at Christmas time or executing some dinky ballroom dancing moves with a female dancer almost make you think the man couldn't go anywhere without a camera looking over his shoulder.
Given the serious, artistic nature of the project itself, it's probably no surprise that a lot of Bowie's more serious ruminations about life, art and music are put before the viewer in voice-over and can seem a tad pretentious. I've seen and heard interviews where he's clearly just larking about and would have like to have seen this side of his character shown a bit more.
Certain not insignificant albums too, seem to get overlooked altogether like "The Man Who Sold the World", "Pin-Ups", "Young Americans" and "The Next Day". There was also no mention of his first wife Angie, notorious manager Tony DeFries or his two children. So it's a selective remembrance of Bowie, but I can live with that remembering that Bowie, when curating his own first "Greatest Hits" album "ChangesOneBowie" omitted what would some would argue were definitive songs like "Life On Mars", "The Man Who Sold The World" or "Starman".
Unusual and stylised as it was, I certainly think this type of representation of Bowie's life is preferable to just another money-spinning, Oscar-baiting semi-fictionalised musical biography such as those recently carried out on his contemporaries, Elton John or Freddie Mercury.
One thing Bowie says quite a lot throughout the movie is how much he had enjoyed and was still enjoying his life, right up to the end. There's practically no coverage of the extended hiatus he took when like the sailor home from the sea he finally settled down to marital bliss in New York with wife Iman. It says a lot for him that he came back to music on his own terms with two fine albums, accompanying idiosyncratic promotional videos and a theatrical work for good measure.
Listen, with the same access to all his video footage, you can imagine a different director coming up with an entirely different set of clips for a very different type of film. Probably there are or will be more linear representations of Bowie's extraordinary life and career so I'm not sure how this smorgasbord approach would appeal to anyone more casually interested in the man.
In the end, I left the movie vaguely unfulfilled and dissatisfied as I concluded that ultimately you couldn't put the Jean Genie back in the bottle.
But was it insightful, revealing or at a basic level entertaining? I wasn't bored by it but in some respects I think he missed the essence of Bowie. For one thing, apart from one reference to Brian Eno obviously around the time of his so-called Berlin Trilogy, there's no reference to any other musical partnerships or collaborations he made in his long career, nothing about Tony Visconti, Mick Ronson or Iggy Pop never mind one-shots with Lennon, Jagger or Queen to name but three, Tin Machine apparently didn't exist.
One is impressed, indeed often amazed at the different video images of Bowie presented here. Sure there's lots of concert stuff and big chunks are taken from well-known interviews with Russell Harty and Dick Cavett and the BBC's "Cracked Actor" film of the mid-70's but the images of Bowie walking through a deserted Japanese shopping centre at Christmas time or executing some dinky ballroom dancing moves with a female dancer almost make you think the man couldn't go anywhere without a camera looking over his shoulder.
Given the serious, artistic nature of the project itself, it's probably no surprise that a lot of Bowie's more serious ruminations about life, art and music are put before the viewer in voice-over and can seem a tad pretentious. I've seen and heard interviews where he's clearly just larking about and would have like to have seen this side of his character shown a bit more.
Certain not insignificant albums too, seem to get overlooked altogether like "The Man Who Sold the World", "Pin-Ups", "Young Americans" and "The Next Day". There was also no mention of his first wife Angie, notorious manager Tony DeFries or his two children. So it's a selective remembrance of Bowie, but I can live with that remembering that Bowie, when curating his own first "Greatest Hits" album "ChangesOneBowie" omitted what would some would argue were definitive songs like "Life On Mars", "The Man Who Sold The World" or "Starman".
Unusual and stylised as it was, I certainly think this type of representation of Bowie's life is preferable to just another money-spinning, Oscar-baiting semi-fictionalised musical biography such as those recently carried out on his contemporaries, Elton John or Freddie Mercury.
One thing Bowie says quite a lot throughout the movie is how much he had enjoyed and was still enjoying his life, right up to the end. There's practically no coverage of the extended hiatus he took when like the sailor home from the sea he finally settled down to marital bliss in New York with wife Iman. It says a lot for him that he came back to music on his own terms with two fine albums, accompanying idiosyncratic promotional videos and a theatrical work for good measure.
Listen, with the same access to all his video footage, you can imagine a different director coming up with an entirely different set of clips for a very different type of film. Probably there are or will be more linear representations of Bowie's extraordinary life and career so I'm not sure how this smorgasbord approach would appeal to anyone more casually interested in the man.
In the end, I left the movie vaguely unfulfilled and dissatisfied as I concluded that ultimately you couldn't put the Jean Genie back in the bottle.