A bloke from Brixton who became the best
Moonage Daydream (M, 140 mins) Directed by Brett Morgen Reviewed by Graeme Tuckett ★★★★★
Idon’t know what I expected Moonage Daydream to be. I knew that director Brett Morgen had made the brilliant Kurt Cobain tribute, Montage of Heck, and that he had been working on his film on David Bowie for years.
I needn’t have worried. Morgen is an exceptional assembler of ideas and influences. What he has achieved with Moonage Daydream is worthy of the subject. Praise doesn’t get much more stratospheric than that.
Moonage Daydream is a mosaic of a life that was usually lived with a camera close by. It is not a concert movie, although it contains a lot of brilliant concert footage, some of which I had never seen. And neither is it a straight documentary, although it charts a roughly chronological course through Bowie’s life.
There are no talking heads, narration or commentaries. We hear mostly only from Bowie, as he contemplates his trajectories and eludes or illuminates his interviewers, depending on his mood.
The Los Angeles years yield a spiky, discordant sequence of fast cuts and jagged sounds, as all those thin white lines wreak havoc on the Thin White Duke and his equilibrium.
In LA, it is often dismayingly hard to pick where The Man Who Fell To Earth film clips end and the newsreel archive begins.
Sequences set in Berlin, London, Indonesia and New York are calmer and are eventually bursting with joy, as Bowie sails into some of the happiest times of his life.
We understand why Morgen spends most of his running time exploring that astonishing run from 1970 to 1983, which contains so much of the music we hear in our heads when we think about David Bowie. And yet, Morgen still finds an elegant and unhurried way to finish
Moonage Daydream, when most of the best-known material and moments have already been used.
The laziest cliche you will ever read about David Bowie is that there was something alien and otherworldly about him. It always seemed to me that the real magic is that he was just a bloke from Brixton who went looking for the best and most interesting life he could live, and pretty much found it.
His real gift to us was to point out that everything we needed was already right here in front of us.
Moonage Daydream is a triumph and an inspiration. It captures Bowie’s joy at being alive and his determination not to waste a single day. In its best moments, this is an immersive and mesmerising piece of work.
Bowie and his music mean a lot to me. I was blessed with two big sisters who were blasting Hunky Dory and Aladdin Sane at me before I could walk.
I left flowers at his apartment on Manhattan’s Lafayette St on the first anniversary of his death.
And my friends know if there’s anything left in my overdraft to pay for it, that I want ‘‘I’m Happy. Hope You’re Happy Too’’ on my gravestone.
I walked out of Moonage Daydream thinking not that I miss him, but just that we are lucky to have been here while he was around. Bravo.
Moonage Daydream is now screening in select cinemas nationwide.