Bret Morgen is one our best documentarians and once again he has turned his filmic eye towards the world of music for this visually visceral sensory overload montage experience; Moonage Daydream; a piece that is not exactly a concert film, not exactly a straight documentary, not exactly a bombardment wall of absurdist visuals... but somewhere in-between and somewhere wonderfully deep in the world of the one and only David Bowie.
Directed, conceived, edited and conceptualised by Bret Morgen, Moonage Daydream, tells the story of David Bowie in a way that perhaps is the only fitting way a film ever could. Morgen blasts music, fills the screen with footage from the years, interviews, music videos, footage of plays and concerts and films, aswell as heady montages of influences and art, until you very well feel completely sensoriallly overloaded. Above all else Morgen has made a bombastic film, brimming with power and content, longing to evoke through montage, big screen depiction and archival elements the David Bowie experience. But what does that mean exactly? Is this straight cradle to grave, talking heads filled, documentary? No, not at all, not in the slightest. Everything is archival and everything, bar a few interviewers here and there provoking him, is Bowie’s voice. He narrates, he constructs and he walks us through elements of his thinking, his life and his work. Morgen adapts and moulds these clips and sessions along with the constant visual onslaught of images clashing and complementing until you genuinely feel like you need to take a break at times. In the sense of absolute artistic hedonism and maximilism, Moonage Daydream presents an element of Bowie’s career like no other film or piece of non-fiction work on the man ever has, or ever will better than this I feel instinctively. It really is an all encompassing piece of work that reflects how it feels to be a fan, a viewer, or for that matters at times even succeeding in presenting in some obtuse way, how it must have felt to be the man himself.
 |
| Credit |
The negatives are few and far between, but at times the repetition and re-use of certain footages may be entrancing, but ends up boring and at times feels ill conceived. It is seemingly without purpose as a choice, especially when the film in the auditory sense and with photographs and images is overflowing constantly with new archival material. And then there comes the old man matter of all this, in that at times I couldn’t help but feel bombarded and drained. Now there comes natural Bowie fan bias into this, in the sense that with such an ever-changing artist you are bound to have a favourite era and so that era is undoubtedly your favourite part of the film (it certainly was in my case), however overall at times, especially near the beginning I couldn’t help but feel that the film needed to slow down a little and let the viewer in. It’s just so completely visually bombastic at times from the off and so experimental in its montage delivery, that at times a viewer could feel distanced or even in my case a little overwhelmed. But of course this is all personal reflection, because this maximilism is all by complete design. Personal taste is just personal taste of course, however would I have preferred to watch this quieter and on a smaller screen, not a damn chance in hell! Watch this film and watch this on the biggest and loudest presentation you can find!
A complete wall of sound and visual mastery 8/10 depiction of the Bowie experience. Told by Morgen in ways you may expect and frequently told with a joyous experimentation that robs us at times of the pure dilution of facts we may want, but instead overloads us with visuals and music to quite literally blow us away. See it as big as possible and see it as loud as possible. As a 2hr and 15min expiericne it’s overwhelming draining, exhausting and intoxicating – but when it works for you, it works like no other music documentary I’ve seen in some time does. Perfectly bizarre, perfectly bombastic, perfectly Bowie.
P.S. Current Bowie top five songs in no particular order, for anybody who cares, would be; Modern Love, Five Years, Lady Grinning Soul, Cat People (Putting Out Fire) and Fashion. With my favourite era being the 80’s. Sorry Bowie purists (of which I would declare myself one too) but I love a good party and that’s what he gave us in the 1980’s.
- - Thomas Carruthers
0 Comments