Moonage Daydream

One of the first pieces of advice most creative artists get is to establish a strong brand. Don’t spread yourself too thinly. Don’t be a writer, a singer, an actor, a mime, a painter and a sculptor. Don’t completely change your look and your performance style every couple of years. Focus on making yourself memorable. Few artists of the 20th Century are likely to be remembered for as long as David Bowie. He describes himself here as a generalist, and he got away with everything. Almost.

Time takes a cigarette. We watch it it light up, that bright orange glow reflecting bright orange hair, a slender stick gripped between two delicate fingers, a rock n’ roll suicide. The cigarettes run throughout the film, each one a presentiment of death. The black stars hover in the future even as the superstar lights up the stage. But in the meantime, in between time, there is so much more.

He describes himself here. Part of what made Bowie so compelling both as an artist and as a human being was his complete immersion in the present moment, so it was perhaps naïve to think that he wouldn’t be in control of this moment, just because he’s dead. Though others have tried to capture something of his magic, this is the first film made with the permission of his estate, and he narrates it himself, through an extensive assemblage of archive interviews and clips. He was always a great teller of tales. Not all his best stories are here – it would take a multitude of films to capture everything – but as one of few human beings to have been almost entirely successful in creating his own life, it seems appropriate that he should have the chance to interpret it for himself. This doesn’t make it less interesting. Nor – so long as you’re paying attention – does it mean it’s always flattering.

In this kaleidoscope life, montage becomes an essential tool, illustrating not only the artist’s own work but his many influences, along with the immediate context in which he was living. There are some notable omissions. No mention is made of his first wife and child, though the film does address other aspects of his personal life. Tin Machine is conspicuous by its absence, and not all of his incarnations get much visibility. Clips from DA Pennebaker’s Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars – still the best Bowie film out there – stand out amongst lower quality footage, much of it now degraded by the passing of time.

A fair bit of attention is paid to his work in the visual arts, which is interesting in light of the fact that it has received comparatively little attention elsewhere, and suggests that director Brett Morgen is attempting to bring us something new rather than just retreading what will already be familiar to fans. Nevertheless, a lot of this has been seen before, and the film is not entirely successful in carving out its own space. Seen on a big screen with a high quality sound system, it’s sufficiently dazzling that this is easily overlooked, but shorn of those advantages it relies a little too heavily on viewer affection for its subject, rather than casting a spell of its own.

There is a sweetness about Iman’s presence here, though we see her only briefly, almost in silhouette. Discovering her, and an overwhelming form of love which seems to have been missing from Bowie’s earlier life, gives the film an ending of sorts which obviates the need to dwell on illness. In front of that door, there is something beyond the self and the immediate. Beyond it, the film slides into a surreal space, a moonscape which might not be our own, which might make viewers think of the silhouette of Watchmen’s Dr, Manhattan, a character whom Bowie was once tipped to play, in an early montage. There are no giant teapots but we are in similar territory. Away from the dazzling lights and gorgeous colours, these are segments when Morgen seems more at ease, the past slows down, and we are free to contemplate not just the dazzling effect of Bowie’s art, but the ways in which it touched on the existential and the eternal.

It is 1972. We are lurching down a backstage corridor. It looks familiar, but Philip Jeffries is nowhere to be seen. It is 1990. A figure appears on a yellow-lit escalator, riding up and down, lost, about to be found. It is 1983 and fearsome Americans are screaming in a queue, anxious to glimpse what they dare not be. It is 1970. It is 1979. It is 1997. A cigarette sparks into life.

Moonage Daydream may only pass the time, but it does so beautifully.