Moonage Daydream movie review

I finally got to see the acclaimed Bowie biographical documentary, Moonage Daydream. I purchased a DVD and watched it at home, which almost certainly detracted from the experience. The movie was less a traditional documentary than an immersive experience of both nonstop sound, images and video. I’ll say up front that’s I liked it. It was not what I expected, but that was both a good thing and a bad thing.

Filmmaker Brett Morgen did less directing than editing. He stitched together a flurry of audio and visual clips, both of Bowie but also of things that influenced Bowie, ranging from very brief clips of German Expressionist silent movies to space related images. Morgan managed to get at least part of a large number of songs in, either via footage of Bowie performing them or as pure background music. The narrator of the film was Bowie himself— Morgen strung together clips of Bowie giving interviews or speaking in some other context. An opening monologue, largely about time, seems really to have been recorded for the documentary, which of course was not true (I don’t know where it came from).

The film moves at a frenetic pace. Images flash just long enough to register (but not necessarily long enough to meaningfully register for anyone unfamiliar with the significance of the image). Both words and music run into, and sometimes over each other. All of this is to establish either the type of chaos Morgen was suggesting populated Bowie’s head, or the chaos surrounding Bowie, or just chaos as a concept, which Bowie identified as a thread connecting his work. For me— I got the point but also found it sometimes disconcerting when a barely audible and fairly nonsensical clip of Bowie talking, juxtaposed over flashing images that were only tangentially related to what he was talking about, did not fade out as a second set of Bowie’s remarks started playing over the first set. Morgen also did this, occasionally, with music.

Despite the chaos, Morgen managed to weave together a pretty basic narrative, telling an incomplete story of about half Bowie’s career, from 1969 through the mid-1990s, with brief allusions to his life before and after. Morgen mostly used music from only a few of Bowie’s albums— Space Oddity, The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust, music from the Berlin period, Let’s Dance and 1. Outside. Boiled down, the story was that Bowie was amazing in the 70s, sold out in the 80s, met Iman and achieved inner peace, and had an artistic comeback in the 90s. Along the way he made movies, painted and did some other stuff.

A recurring visual theme of the film was footage of Bowie walking or otherwise in movement, going somewhere. This footage was often taken from behind and most prominently featured the back of Bowie’s head, which perhaps more than most heads— was very recognizable. Nonetheless, I don’t remember Morgen driving the point home with any of Bowie’s songs about moving, such as “Station to Station” (1975) or “Move On” (1979).

Bowie comes off as a lonely genius, in constant motion, on the edge of sanity. Interviewers seemed to misunderstand Bowie and condescend to him. One of the longer clips, of Bowie in full Ziggy-era regalia, talking to a sneering British square, seems almost like Bowie was talking through time to a future audience that was in on the joke. As I myself have commented in various posts on this blog, Bowie thought much about both time (an enemy) and space (a source of comfort). That all showed through.

The movie was far from perfect. To begin with, much of the rat-a-tat-tat of references would necessarily be lost on people without deep knowledge of Bowie. This movie really wasn’t for them, although I expect that casual fans of Bowie’s music would at least have enjoyed exposure to that on the big screen (less so on a television).

I have heard Morgen talk about complaints he’s received about leaving a lot out. His response , understandably, was in part that he only had so much time and that he wasn’t setting out to make a biography of David Jones, but more an examination of David Bowie, who essentially was a meta-character. That’s all understandable, but I also felt he left a lot out. For me, the most notable omission was Bowie’s choreographed exit. Though a few Blackstar-related clips briefly appeared, the main of Morgen’s story ended about twenty years before Bowie died. Morgen used two versions of the song “Hallo Spaceboy,” from the 1995 album 1. Outside, to bookend his movie, as if to say “hallo” to Bowie at the beginning of his career and “hallo” again at the point of his creative rebirth. But we don’t really get a “goodbye”— and the actual David Bowie gave us a goodbye like no other.

All that said, I’m glad I finally saw it and I’m glad it exists. As an exercise in editing, the movie is an achievement. I’m looking forward to listening to the two-CD soundtrack next, and when I do, I’ll post commentary about that, too.

One last note: I wanted to get my initial impressions down “on paper” shortly after watching Moonage Daydream for the first time. I’ll watch it again at some point and probably post a second set of comments after that. So stay tuned!