David Bowie was so ahead of his time that, even six years after his death, his music seems advanced. Brett Morgen’s concert film/documentary Moonage Daydream is a cause for celebration for the Thin White Duke’s millions of fans with its combination of musical footage, interviews with Bowie, other archival clips, and animation.
Morgen has said that Moonage Daydream was initially intended as an “immersive experience” akin to The Beatles’ collaboration with Cirque du Soleil, Love. Trailers are touting it as a “cinematic experience,” which is a fairly accurate description: it’s deliberately not a traditional biographical documentary in the sense that people’s names and films’ titles aren’t identified with captions, nor are new interviews inserted. None of this deeply detracts from its overall structure.
Bowie’s life and work need no introduction, yet his story remains fresh and vital. The audience follows David Jones of Brixton as he creates the chameleon-like character that we think of as “David Bowie.” One interviewer describes Bowie as an artist whose canvas is himself, which Bowie wholeheartedly agrees with. He constantly pushed boundaries, like with his flamboyant androgyny at a time when simply dyeing his hair bright red was considered shocking.
Moonage Daydream drifts through many of his career’s key points, like his early triumph as Ziggy Stardust and his collaborations with Brian Eno, into his ’80s superstardom with chart-topping hits like “Let’s Dance,” and beyond. Much of the material was drawn from Bowie’s own archive, which he accumulated during his lifetime, and we hear about his half-brother who had schizophrenia, his movie career, his happy marriage to Iman, and his final years.
Moonage Daydream continually reminds us what a polymath Bowie was. The minute he excelled in some art form, he would challenge himself with something new. From experimental rock, to film work, to starring as The Elephant Man on Broadway, to painting, he wholly immersed himself in each medium he worked in. His intense enthusiasm, creativity, and curiosity are infectious.
If you’re into Bowie and his music, this movie is an easy sell and you won’t be disappointed. Its primary focus is his onstage performances and videos, and hearing Bowie’s classics like “Space Oddity,” “Sound and Vision,” and “Aladdin Sane” blasting out of a movie theater’s sound system is reason enough to see it in a theater (preferably in IMAX).
Brett Morgen is, by his own admission, not a trained editor, and Moonage Daydream is rough around the edges. But Morgen’s subject and his music are so entertaining and interesting, he couldn’t possibly miss with his overall product. Bowie’s music is evergreen, and his interviews never get dull. It’s striking how vastly more gregarious, articulate, funny, and engaging he is in these interviews than most rock stars, and his unrelenting love of life and creativity give the film enormous energy. “Don’t waste a minute,” Bowie tells an interviewer. Judging by Moonage Daydream, he never did.