The new docu about David Bowie is breathtaking, mesmerizing and dizzying.

That's exactly the problem

The docu "Moonage Daydream" presents a spectacular visual mosaic about the musician who fell from another planet, focusing on his mysterious sides and the experiential dimension of the art he created.

It's an intriguing choice, but it seems that because of the preoccupation with form, the film misses the essence - and does an injustice to the complex character that is Bowie

Salon associate

16/09/2022

Friday, September 16, 2022, 06:00 Updated: 06:37

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The trailer for the movie "Moonage Daydream" (courtesy of Tulip entertainment)

Two and a half stars (Photo: Image processing, .)

There's a David Bowie for everyone.

There's David Bowie for pop lovers, David Bowie for rock lovers, David Bowie for arty punks, David Bowie for nerds, David Bowie for lovers, David Bowie for heartbroken, David Bowie for gays, David Bowie for conservatives, David Bowie for spirituals and there's even David Bowie for kids (look for the awesome version his to "Peter and the Wolf").

Bowie's art, expressed through his music, adapted itself to time and place, while at the same time being universal and transtemporal.

His character was insanely masculine, but at the same time also androgynous.

This is not an exaggeration and certainly not a mistake.

So many faces to the same person.

It is difficult to summarize the character of the man in one work.

Whether it is an article, a book or a movie, and the result will almost always be doomed to failure in the face of the mountain of expectations.

Into this mountain went director Brett Morgan, who had already made several successful biopics about OJ Simpson, Kurt Cobain, Jane Goodall and the Rolling Stones.

His new film, "Moonage Daydream" which is released today in Israel for one week only, is very different from his previous films.

While in the past Morgan has intelligently used archive footage to build a historical and human narrative, this time the director builds a kind of kaleidoscopic mosaic that paints a bigger, more colorful - but much less coherent - picture.

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Mesmerizing and dizzying, in an exaggerated section.

David Bowie in Moonage Daydream (photo: Tulip entertainment)

Morgan collected for four years different video clips of Bowie, who passed away in 2016 a few days after his 69th birthday.

The clips were taken from interviews with remote media outlets across Europe, live performances from over the years and also some photographs of Bowie's own artworks, which have never been seen by the general public.

The result is dizzying, sometimes literally - certainly when you see it on the huge IMAX screen, for which the film was shot especially.

But after two and a half hours of such segments, it's hard not to feel a sense of dizzying failure.

A work that is completely invested in its form, until it forgot to include content in it as well.

It's pretty clear who the film isn't for: people who don't know David Bowie or people who know him, but want to know more.

The film does not provide information in the usual documentary sense.

It does not contain interviews with people who knew the deceased, it does not contain a chronological narrative of his transformation from a London boy to a major international star, it does not even contain important trivia details such as his first wife, and his only son.

Those who do not know the man, may mistakenly think that he passed away without children.

The thing is, it's just not that kind of movie.

The word "documentary" is almost a lie in this case.

Who is the movie for?

Well, that's a trickier question.

David's longtime and devout fans, and there are many of them, will not find much new information in the film about the object of their admiration.

They will see the man they love in a variety of visually mesmerizing situations, hear some forgotten songs in stunning versions and fully absorb the "mysterious" angle of a story about the man who landed from another planet.

This is the only angle Morgan chooses to address.

A legitimate choice, which will satisfy quite a few fans, but it is hard to avoid the feeling that it does injustice to the complex character that is Bowie, and presents him in a somewhat simplistic way.

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With so much color, it's hard to recognize the person under the makeup.

David Bowie in Moonage Daydream (photo: Tulip entertainment)

It's a shame mainly because Morgan's display of visual purpose is breathtaking, the only problem is that it sometimes comes at the expense of the man he seeks to immortalize.

The archive clips include clips from concerts, clips from interviews and just clips where you see Bowie without music in the background.

Paints, sculpts, trains for some role in the theater.

The heterochromia in his eyes, which gives his penetrating gaze an extraterrestrial appearance, becomes a cinematic tool in the film.

Bowie's words are deep and wise, and Morgan builds a puzzle that shows how he chose the path of an "entertainer" (for lack of a better word for "entertainer" in Hebrew) and at the same time the pictures often show him at the height of his loneliness.

Portrait of the artist as a sad man.

An exile by choice from the world he was forced to live in.

This is indeed one angle to paint Bowie's character, but it leaves out too many other equally interesting angles.

Bowie talks lovingly about his musical inspirations.

In a particularly charming segment, he tells how as a teenager he used to listen to the records of the American rock'n'roll pioneer Pats Domino, but could not understand the words he was singing.

It was precisely this lack of understanding that made the music more powerful in his eyes.

Bowie's message is clear, music should be "experienced", not analyzed.

The words are important, the melody is necessary - but it's the feeling that counts.

The tension, the mystery, the anticipation.

This is the real art.

And this is also what Morgan tries to do in the film.

Sometimes it succeeds, but quite often the desire to present a creative image comes at the expense of the essence.

The result is a somewhat disconnected and isolated film, a fact that will keep random viewers away from the theaters (in fact, at the screening I attended there were quite a few viewers who left in the middle) and will annoy quite a few fans who see David Bowie as an integral part of their lives.

What remains at the end is the great music, the one that will surely continue to play in the head of everyone who sees the film.

the one that will live forever.

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