In 2017, Brett Morgen had access to thousands of hours of unpublished and personal archives of David Bowie, made available by his estate. Morgen, who had directed the documentary Montage of Heck on Kurt Cobain in 2015, pays homage to the Thin White Duke, six years after his death.
Posted September 23
Moonage Daydream, which premiered last May at the Cannes Film Festival, is anything but a classic documentary or a traditional biopic. It is an immersion in the musical and pictorial work of David Bowie, through his artistic, philosophical and spiritual journey.
Brett Morgen has created an exploded, offbeat, colorful, psychedelic, not quite chronological work, in tune with the avant-garde and prolific artist that was Bowie. At 33, Bowie had already recorded 17 albums, exhibited numerous paintings and sculptures, starred in two films and a play on Broadway. “I am a generalist,” he liked to say.
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David Bowie in a scene from Moonage Daydream
Moonage Daydream, it’s “Bowie by Bowie” or “Life according to Bowie”. We hear his voice from beginning to end, off screen or on screen. There are no other speakers. Que Bowie, his drawings, his sculptures, footage from his interviews, his music videos, his films and 48 of his remastered songs, in studio and live versions.
Morgen had access to over five million archival items, including notebooks, drawings and rare recordings. He worked for four years on this project, including two years combing the archives, then only eighteen months on the sound and the animated and computer-generated images that illustrate Bowie’s words.
The assembly of Moonage Daydream, the result of colossal work, is a tour de force. Morgen has included excerpts from films that inspired Bowie (The trip to the moon, Metropolis, Nosferatu the Vampire, A Clockwork Orangeetc.) and those in which he starred (The Man Who Fell to Earth, Labyrinth, Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence). He also drew on his music videos, from which he notably extracted his famous dance steps with Quebecer Louise Lecavalier for the song Famous.
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David Bowie in a scene from Moonage Daydream
The result is an impressionistic film about the life and work of one of the most influential artists of the past 50 years. In 2 h 15 min, Morgen does not cover everything and skips some bits. Sections of Bowie’s career have been set aside, especially from the 1990s (the whole Tin Machine adventure, in particular).
Brett Morgen offers an inevitably flattering portrait, which generally avoids the trap of hagiography. It shows the emaciated-faced, drug-addicted Bowie of the mid-1970s. And in Bowie’s words again, we look back to his business turn of the mid-1980s, when money seemed to have taken over the artistic relevance. We remember it with the images of a Pepsi ad with Tina Turner, on the song Modern Love.
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David Bowie in a scene from Moonage Daydream
Bowie reveals himself enormously in this film where there is a lot of talk about his philosophy of life. “I hate wasting a day,” he said in an interview. We smile thinking that artists like Harry Styles or Timothée Chalamet are reacting today because they have fun with the androgynous codes of fashion. When you see Bowie in Ziggy Stardust paraphernalia, in an interview on British TV 50 years ago, you think you have a short memory.
Moonage Daydreamthe title of which is taken from a famous song by The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, is aimed as much at Bowie diehards as at those who only know him through his best-known songs. It is a formidable tornado of images, ideas and unforgettable songs, from an immense and immortal artist. Coolest to ever set foot on Earth or Mars.
Documentary
Moonage Daydream
Brett Morgan