Moonage Daydream David Bowie Movie

Описание: Dramatic biopics of popular musicians like Bohemian Rhapsody and A Complete Unknown have managed to become significant cultural events in the past decade, but there’s an even greater demand for documentaries about these artists. Nearly every streaming service includes a few nonfiction films or shows that include interviews and archive footage with famous artists, and they’re rarely challenging; considering that most of these projects are done with the approval of the family, there’s little interest in making anything but a hagiography that brushes aside any controversies. Moonage Daydream is unique among music documentaries because it is impressionistic and doesn’t fit into a typical structure. While this sort of stylized approach could have felt off-putting for most artists, it ended up being the perfect way to capture the essence of David Bowie.

Bowie is a fascinating figure among cinephiles because of the troubles that prevent a traditional biopic from moving forward. Bowie was a fairly accomplished actor who gave great performances in cult classics like Labyrinth, The Man Who Fell to Earth, and Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, but his family and estate have resisted licensing his music for a traditional biopic; when the critically reviled biopic Stardust debuted in 2020, it was not allowed to use any of Bowie’s music. Moonage Daydream was met with approval by Bowie fans because it was a singular work of art in its own right. If most music documentaries aim to educate their viewers on the facts and figures of their subject’s lives, Moonage Daydream is a sensory experience that encapsulates what it was like to watch Bowie’s development as an artist in real time.

Moonage Daydream is devoid of the type of talking heads, contemporary footage, and staged recreations that are common in documentaries; given that there are already enough books and articles that recount Bowie’s life, there was no need to provide information to the audience that they could find elsewhere. Moonage Daydream had the benefit of being approved by Bowie’s family, which allowed the film to use his full archive of songs, as well as an amazing amount of previously unseen footage of his concerts and performances. While there are obvious inclusions of famous tracks such as “Starman,” “Space Oddity,” and the titular “Moonage Daydream,” the film also includes some of the underground, experimental music that Bowie did during the early stages of his career and at the end of his life. Rather than only focusing on the era in which he was the most culturally relevant, Moonage Daydream tries to capture the entirety of a complicated figure.

Anyone who considers themselves to be a fan of Bowie knows that the late artist was as interested in visuals as he was in music; his music videos were frequently groundbreaking in the way that they incorporated surrealist imagery and employed the work of visual artists that Bowie had come to respect and admire. Moonage Daydream is a very expressive, visually dynamic experience that uses its eye-popping colors to note thematic changes and dramatic detours, which resemble the structure of Bowie’s songs. The use of these visuals also helped the film to reckon with some of the primary influences on Bowie’s work; since he famously wrote “Space Oddity” after having a transcendent experience watching 2001: A Space Odyssey, it made sense to include the type of cryptic science fiction imagery that had been made iconic by Stanley Kubrick’s masterpiece. These amazing stylistic achievements were made even more impactful because the film debuted in select cities on IMAX screens, allowing viewers to soak up all the minuscule details.

One of the reasons that Bowie was such a groundbreaking artist, and one difficult to write about, is because of the different personas he took on within his professional career and personal life. Bowie released albums under different personalities, and often spoke about gender fluidity at a time when culture was far more conservative. Moonage Daydream embraces the totality of Bowie’s essence by dedicating individual chapters to each of his personas, allowing the viewer to see the alterations in his public persona, musical interests, and general well-being during these distinct eras. It would be reductive to incorporate “experts” or fans in these moments with talking heads to try and define what Bowie was doing because he was an artist who was beloved for being undefinable. By simply showing intimate moments of Bowie in his element, Moonage Daydream allowed its audience to draw their own conclusions about him.

Moonage Daydream is fairly comprehensive in examining the maturation of Bowie’s concert experiences and how he became a figure of cultural ubiquity. What Moonage Daydream understood is that Bowie succeeded because audiences could see themselves in and develop a personal relationship with his presence, which made his tragic passing in 2016 such a devastating moment. Source: Collider