Holding the Music in Your Hands ®

Thanks for being a part of the SDE community.

Don't have an account? Sign up!

In Moonage Daydream, Brett Morgen’s new documentary film, David Bowie narrates the story of his life and career with audio lifted from a multitude of interviews over the years and decades. There are no ‘talking heads’ to guide us through (there’s not even any captions), the only voice we hear is Bowie’s and the various interviewers from around the world that talked to him. All this is set to footage of David Bowie being David Bowie. Whether that’s playing live on the Ziggy Stardust tour in 1972/3, walking around looking meaningful in the Far East (from the Ricochet documentary of 1984), acting in films (The Man Who Fell To Earth) or simply talking to Russel Harty.

In one respect, the documentary is fairly traditional, with Bowie’s aural history broadly in chronological order. He tells us of his “ordinary” upbringing, his cool relationship with his mother (“we have an understanding”), the positive influence of his half-brother Terry (who went on to spend most of his life in hospital due to schizophrenia) and in the early 1970s, his relaxed attitude to (bi)sexuality. We move through the various phases of his creative life, as he departs for America to soak up the influences (like a fly in a carton of milk!), heads to Berlin to record with Eno and Visconti, decides to become an “entertainer” in the early 80s with Let’s Dance and then ends up in the creative ghetto of Pepsi-sponsored corporate rock for most of the rest of that decade. He reconnects with his desire to be artistic, vows to please himself in the 1990s, meets his second wife Iman (there’s no mention of Angie), falls in love and is finally contented.

That’s where convention stops. Visually Moonage Daydream is a feast, bordering at times on overindulgence. As Bowie speaks to us, Morgen will often overlay a period-relevant visual, before juxtaposing other shots of David from completely different eras of his life and career. Ziggy on stage in 73 cuts straight to a pensive Bowie in being filmed in the Far East a decade later, before switching back again. 1991 ’Sound + Vision’ Bowie drops in regularly throughout the 1970s (much footage is used from the ‘Fame ’90’ video) and during a ‘Let’s Dance’ sequence there’s a frenzied pace to the editing that switches frenetically from Earls Court in ’78 to Ziggy in ’73, to David Live in LA, to Footstompin’ on The Dick Cavett Show and so on. Woven into this are often stunning animations and celestial visuals; cuts to iconic pop-culture visuals from the 20th century (e.g. Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey); familiar footage (Alan Yentob’s Cracked Actor documentary from 1975) and the not so familiar (stunning film of Bowie in Hansa Studios in Berlin).

The spoken word audio and visuals rest of a bed of music that binds everything together. The sound design is incredible and with the help of Tony Visconti songs are often deconstructed and reconstructed during a sequence before morphing into something else. This provides a kaleidoscopic and sometimes disorienting experience. Morgen is clearly influenced by Bowie’s mid-seventies ‘cut-up’ lyric-writing techniques (a concept borrowed from William Burroughs) where he’d write lyrics and cut them up and jumble them about with the goal being to inspire new ideas. Morgen takes his cue from that and uses this non-linear technique visually, something Steven Soderbergh played with in his 1999 film The Limey.

As a technical and creative achievement it’s significant and one can only wonder how long it took Morgen (who ‘wrote’, directed and edited the documentary) to put together this million-piece jigsaw. It was surely an all-consuming obsession for some years.

While it’s clever, one question we must ask is whether this technique truly works as a documentary. Does Moonage Daydream teach us anything new about David Bowie? The wonderful footage, the probing interviews (some more revealing than others) and the incredible live performances are all highly enjoyable, but when stitched together they do not add up to more than the sum of their parts. The film searches for some higher truth and deep insight but fails to find it. David Bowie was an interesting interviewee, but you have to question whether linking disparate, on the hoof responses together provides us with a reliable world view.

For example his ’selling out’ to be a unit-shifting ’80s pop star is certainly covered but isn’t properly explored, save for hints that he simply wanted a big pay cheque by moving to EMI (in one clip he laughs before exclaiming “no shit, Sherlock” when it’s put to him in the late 1970s that his Berlin period of albums can’t have been the most lucrative). There are also gaps, including that significant creative control-alt-delete that was rock band Tin Machine in 1989. This is completely ignored (possibly due to ongoing contractual disputes). 

At two hours and 15 minutes the film is at least half an hour too long, a feeling accentuated by the reuse of clips you’ve already seen on a number of occasions which gives a rather circular, haven’t-we-been-here-before vibe to proceedings. When you’re sneaking a glance at your watch regularly during the last stretch and hoping it’s the end when the screen fades to black (only for it to start into the next sequence) you know there’s something wrong, somewhere.

Most disconcertingly, Moonage Daydream is oddly unmoving, even in the final throes, as ‘Blackstar’ plays. There’s a feeling of Bowie keeping his distance with his interviewers over the years. He’s in control, perhaps playing a role like Ziggy or The Thin White Duke. You can see why the Estate approved this documentary concept. With David as narrator, Moonage Daydream is yet another masterclass in Bowie pulling the strings, this time from beyond the grave.

Moonage Daydream opens on 16 September 2022. A soundtrack will be released as a 2CD set on 18 November.

SuperDeluxeEdition.com  helps fans around the world discover physical music and discuss releases. To keep the site free, SDE participates in various affiliate programs, including Amazon and earns from qualifying purchases.

2CD set of hits, rarities and curios

Toy is released this week.

The album was issued on this day in 1971

New two-CD set casts a light on Bowie between albums

Sign up for our newsletter for special updates and alerts direct to your inbox.

Please check your email to confirm your subscription

Copyright © 2011-21 superdeluxeedition • Cookies • Site Made in Collaboration with CMYK