Moonage Daydream

MOONAGE DAYDREAM   ***

Brett Morgen

2022

IDEA:  An impressionistic look at the life and career of David Bowie.

BLURB:  Some alternative titles to Morgen’s documentary: Montage Daydream. The Gospel According to St. Bowie. Composed of rapid-fire, kaleidoscopic cascades of image and audio, the film uses the lens of Bowie’s artistry to center his guiding philosophies on art, identity, relationships, and the purpose of life. Alongside a dizzying spate of concert footage, film clips, and various archival materials and new audiovisual inventions, the multi-hyphenate (or “generalist” as he wryly dubs himself) ruminates eloquently on everything from his methodology to humankind’s deepest existential quandaries. Morgen is the director, but the words mostly come from Bowie, giving Moonage Daydream the feeling of a personal diary or homily. We are given mesmerizing entry into the mind of this brilliant, willfully unclassifiable figure, whose erudite lucidity and coherence of vision fascinatingly belies the protean form in which he presented himself. He comes across as something of a Zen guru, dispensing wisdom derived from keen observation and introspection, qualities not often associated with global pop stars. The overall impression is of a man and artist preternaturally attuned to himself and the world(s) in which he operated, who found success not by molding himself to public perception but by molding public perception to himself. It’s hard to deny the colors of hagiography shading this project, especially because Morgen reinforces Bowie’s self-appointed mythological status as a high priest of social misfits. At the same time, the film’s hectic, often pell-mell form - which aptly embodies the artist’s ethos about embracing the chaos of existence - ensures that Moonage Daydream doesn’t become disingenuously pat. In the end, it’s a reverent but necessarily fragmented portrait that honors all the polymorphic ways Bowie expressed his passion for being.