Moonage Daydream

Moonage Daydream

A cinematic odyssey featuring never-before-seen footage exploring David Bowie's creative and musical journey.

  • Released:
  • Runtime: 120 minutes
  • Genre: Documentaries, Music
  • Stars: David Bowie, Iman, Lou Reed, Tina Turner, Russell Harty, Dick Cavett, Bing Crosby, Elizabeth Taylor, Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, Max von Sydow, Charlie Chaplin, Max Schreck, Mick Ronson, Trevor Bolder, Mick 'Woody' Woodmansey, Ken Fordham, Brian Wilshaw, Geoffrey MacCormack, John 'Hutch' Hutchinson, Mike Garson
  • Director: Brett Morgen
 Comments
  • proud_luddite - 5 April 2024
    Enjoyable
    Produced by the USA and Germany, this documentary highlights the career and life of the legendary British superstar David Bowie. The film mostly focusses on the time period from the early 1970s up until the early 1990s.

    As the film begins by recalling the early 1970s, what a truly psychedelic vibe it creates. The era is greatly reflected with a superb mix of animated footage, actual footage (including live concerts) and song recordings. And of course, those special fashions of the early 70s! The unique mixing style continues throughout the film in later time periods and includes excerpts from classic movies.

    The scenes of Bowie's musings of life are often fascinating though some of them could have been edited. During one scene, he seems to be encouraging how life should be for people. From today's perspective, this might seem inappropriate as it is coming from someone with great advantages and privileges; the average person could never be anywhere close to the life he was living. But it's important to keep in mind that this was expressed during an era when there was much less distance among the socioeconomic classes than there is now. So, the philosophy seems right for its time period.

    In the end, the film seems perhaps a bit long but with its focus on such a fascinating subject, this seems to matter little. - dbamateurcritic.
  • FifteenOcelots - 15 May 2023
    Disorienting and Disappointing
    This movie seemed to me less an attempt to represent the life of David Bowie, and more like the filmmaker wanting to make a statement. It presenting Bowie's career as - and was edited in a way that was - disorienting, transgressive, unfixed, trippy, and random. As others have said, the visual assault / sensory overload / irrational jumble aspect of the movie was difficult to take.

    Bowie's career was so deep, rich, and full of output that one could have chosen any one of a hundred themes or textures to make a movie about it. But it also seemed to me that Bowie could be a pretty down to earth and coherent guy at least as often as he could be random.

    I was glad that the movie focused on Bowie's philosophical side and his theories of aesthetics and creativity, since I think that that is one of the most interesting things about him. I think though that any movie about him that never touches on his songwriting, musical arrangements, and musical collaborations misses the biggest boat. His theories of performance - specially, integrating different styles of theater into rock concerts - is fascinating too.

    It seemed that the movie only briefly touched on the first six or last thirty years of Bowie's career, focusing instead on 1973-1983. It would make sense that a movie would lose interest around the time the public masses lost interest, and also Bowie in the seventies may have set a record for how much vitality and aliveness a human has ever packed into a decade. But for a movie whose thesis seems to be that the man lived in a completely random and unfixed way, it seems dishonest to not include the years in which he had matured and lived in a more settled down way.