Moonage Daydream
Brett Morgen's noisy documentary/experience titled Moonage Daydream is an explosion of sounds, colors, and words to tell the life and art of David Bowie. Frankly unmissable.
Moonage Daydream, directed by Brett Morgen, a cinematic transfiguration of the life of David Bowie, will be released exclusively in IMAX theaters from 15 to 21 September 2022, then more traditionally in cinemas from 26 to 28. The first at the Cannes Film Festival in 2022, with very encouraging results. For American sites specialized in critical matters, the label to be pasted on the back of the film ", Italian translation not required, is that of" universal acclaim ".
It must be said that he gives him. It lasts about two hours and twenty minutes and is great, whatever it is. It is not a documentary. Woe to consider it such, if you find the word reproduced in the title of the review or perhaps elsewhere, it will be more for editorial needs than for firm conviction. Moonage Daydream is a clear rejection of traditional narrative forms, the impeachment (!) Of conventions.
It is a sensory, visual, sound, aesthetic, and artistic experience which, in the collage of materials, some unpublished, others not, in the search for a meaning beyond the lazy surface of things, harnesses the (emotional) interiority and the (artistic) exteriority of an unattainable icon. As the slogan said, David Bowie, always imitated, never equaled? More or less, and it's easy to see why.
Moonage Daydream: David Bowie, collector by vocation
Brett Morgen, for his part, has a good feeling about the music and the musicians. It was his, in 2015, just to give an example, the successful Cobain: Montage of Heck. A powerful exploration of the tormented interiority of one of the last, great and angry prophets of rock. But that was, in fact, still a documentary. However, it was beginning to take some liberties with respect to the canonical approach to the genre, because alongside the talking heads (standard testimonies) and at the same time the story, after all linear, was accompanied by more breaking interventions, like interesting explanatory parentheses entrusted to animation.
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| Andor/Disney+ |
It would be ungenerous to reduce Operation Kurt Cobain to an elaborate dress rehearsal for something more allusive, powerful, and articulate. Moonage Daydream is, however, a significant step forward, a breath of freedom, liberation from old habits, and an escape to something new and exciting.
In a moment of sincere self-analysis, which arrives more or less halfway through the film, David Bowie is asked to define himself and he does not hold back and replies: I am a collector. It is a definition that strikes for accuracy and sense of proportion, all the more so because the slightly more informed viewer realizes that the Bowie who gives birth to it is that of the mid-70s, there is still a long way to go, but at least on this aspect already has clear ideas. David Bowie's personality and art result from an inexhaustible process of selection, reworking, and synthesis of influences, philosophies, and suggestions. Combined, they produce a layered identity, in perennial movement.
Every mask, from Ziggy Stardust to the White Duke. Every sensational inversion of the sound, from the glam of the (almost) beginnings to the art rock / experimental turning point of the Berlin period, to then move on to the commercial triumph of the early 80s with relative loss of purity up to the tiring (but exciting) reconstruction process of artistic integrity, testifies to David Bowie's attempt to come to terms with his own identity, questioning and questioning himself.
Moonage Daydream is the history of man and artist, harmony and conflict in equal parts. Fragmented by nature and by the duty of consistency, the film adapts to the pace of its hero and becomes a collector in turn. Brett Morgen amasses an impressive number of repertoire materials.
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| Andor/Disney+ |
There is the energy of the live shows, the fundamentalist devotion of the fans, glimpses of private life, extracts from interviews, and an archive of cinephile gems that weaves undisputed classics (Kubrick, Fellini, Lang, and many others) with cornerstones of the genre (especially skiing -fi); in the middle, also some of the most famous cinematic forays of ours, from The Man Who Fell to Earth to Furyo to Miriam wakes up at midnight.
In the life and art of David Bowie, what matters is the expression
Moonage Daydream is the perfect crime for anyone who loves the art and the extrovert personality of David Bowie. A very slender but still recognizable narrative line, continually contradicted by the ping pong between past and present and by the bold juxtaposition of sources.
This is enough to replicate that particular mix of originality of inspiration and clarity of calculation that has always guided the path of the protagonist. A film about Bowie as Bowie could have thought and made it, proof of consistency all the more surprising considering that there is a complex vision upstream. Brett Morgen talks about the man, and the artist, sometimes separating them, very often together.
He is not looking for a real contrast between public and private because he knows that artistic expression feeds on both and in this specific case, being and appearing, reality and expression are really one. Expression is a keyword. Here, perhaps, is THE key word.
Like most men, David Bowie is curious, hungry for life, and knows how to attack her with the right attitude, which is that of an explorer. He can't help but look within and think about the result of his discoveries. Coming to terms with one's identity means reviewing the terms of one's relationship with the world, talking and thinking about important things such as love, death, and creativity, because there is not only music.
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| Andor/Disney+ |
What sets him apart from the crowd, in addition to a considerably above-average talent, is a natural willingness to welcome the life that spins all the time. Bowie's identity is the sum of a certain number of masks, many musical styles, of fluid sexuality. A total made up of many parts, none of which, upstream, is worth more than the others. Talking about travel and destination, at these levels, doesn't make much sense, suggests Moonage Daydream.
They are the same thing. The staging that Bowie offers of his body and soul, be it a disguise or a particular musical device, is the very meaning of his art. The mystery of identity is not closed in who knows what in the psyche's back room and this is true for every man. Identity is the expression, the way we decide to reveal ourselves.
Beyond everything, however, Moonage Daydream does not let itself be distracted by its anti-conventionality and does not forget to tell what we need to know about Bowie's life. There is a childhood lulled by dreams of glory, between cold parents and stepbrother Terry who leads him on the path of art but "abandons" him by succumbing to schizophrenia, a trauma that will affect him for a long time.
There are the eclectic 70s and impetuous creativity but lacking in commercial gratification and the 80s that overturn the perspective, there is the refusal of love (first) and the happy marriage with Iman (later). There are historical albums, the most famous songs, there is Starman, Life on Mars ?, Moonage Daydream (the song), there is "Heroes" and don't forget the quotes.
What the film lacks is the flat exposure, the rosary of politically correct testimonies, and the cult of zero to zero. In its place is the little-traveled track of sensory experience, the montage that gives birth to an unprecedented association of sounds, words, and images with a clear poetic value. Pure cinema, it's really amazing that it worked so well.