Moonage Daydream (2022)

[dpippel]

Title: Moonage Daydream (2022)

Genre: Documentary, Music

Director: Brett Morgen

Cast: David Bowie

Release: 2022-05-24

Runtime: 140

Plot: Crafted from thousands of hours of rare performance footage, described as “neither documentary nor biography, but an immersive cinematic experience.”

 

[dpippel]

I am REALLY looking forward to this!

 

[Mikael Soderholm]

Really, can't wait.

 

[Alex...]

 

[Mikael Soderholm]

So, no comments yet?
Saw it on IMAX last night, and it was totally magnificent, like nothing I've ever seen before. Not a movie, more an experience.
It's a constant stream of consciousness of Bowie acting, singing, talking, furiously cut and edited, that slowly gels into a philosophical journey of a very interesting individual and leaves you with a sense of 'oh my, what is this'? And where am I?
Totally fantastic for a long time Bowie fan like me, and the main thing was not the (few) previously unseen clips, it was the message of his journey to wisdom, and his constant search.
But the clips, and the music, of course, were fantastic as well, but the main thing was the message, not the previously unseen clips, at least to me.
Don't miss.
And see it on the largest screen you can find.

There's a Starman, waiting in the sky.

 

[Colin Jacobson]

And for a contrasting POV from another diehard Bowie fan:

It's a mess. Incoherent and grating much of the time, the movie seems satisfactory neither for people like me nor for those without much Bowie background.

The movie assumes the viewer enters with good Bowie history knowledge, as it progresses through eras with little explanation.

Which is fine for someone like me, but for those who lack such background, I suspect the movie will become very confusing.

If the movie offered real depth about Bowie, that would be okay, but it seems extremely superficial. The film's thesis seems to be the usual "Bowie was a chameleon and always on the move", which means it comes with little actual insight.

I take that back: it comes with no actual insight. It regurgitates cliche views of Bowie and never delivers substance.

The movie's idea of pensive meaning comes from its overuse of footage shot in Asia at the end of his 1983. The film utilizes these clips - which fans know from the "Ricochet" documentary - throughout its length whenever it wants "Bowie as a searcher" material.

The movie essentially starts in 1972 and comes with only a few flashbacks to indicate Bowie existed before he "became" Ziggy Stardust. In an eye-rolling move, the headache-inducing visuals appear to equate this to the Big Bang.

From there until Bowie goes to Berlin in 1977, the film pours on visual overload that make it look like one long Nine Inch Nails video from 1994. It's relentless and incoherent.

I guess this intends to convey the frantic and occasionally unhinged nature of Bowie's life in that period. Gone unsaid? The fact he was coked to the gills for a substantial amount of that period - or anything that would qualify as actual information.

The frenetic visuals calm when he gets to Berlin, as the movie wants to convey Bowie's increasing inner peace.

I guess. The movie never gets close to the heart of Bowie, as it just churns out whatever old sound bites it can find to support its "thesis".

That 1972-76 span plays so poorly I nearly walked out of the theater. Pretentious and incoherent, it's a chore to endure.

When the pace calms, the movie becomes more watchable, and the director does work from an enviable archive of material - even if he remains obsessed with that "Ricochet" footage. Still, we get snatches of fascinating live material and some good interview snippets.

Too bad it's all in service of a movie that has nothing fresh to say - and that says its tired ideas in an intensely off-putting manner.

Bowie could use a long-form documentary ala Beatles "Anthology". This thing is a borderline unwatchable disaster.

 

[ChristopherG]

well those two reviews couldn't be more far apart....

 

[Colin Jacobson]

well those two reviews couldn't be more far apart....

A lot of people like it and it's getting very good reviews.

I honestly don't understand why, but my assessment seems to be in the minority.

I do need to say that seeing it on the biggest possible screen doesn't make sense to me given the nature of so much of the material.

Some of the footage looks fine on an IMAX screen. There's live 1978 film that's amazing in terms of quality.

But most of the footage is decidedly ugly. We get lots of videotaped material that looks bad on a TV, much less on a large screen, as well as stuff like the 1973 "Ziggy: The Motion Picture" footage that's 16mm and always been problematic.

Maybe 20% of the movie looks good - and that's probably generous.

The rest is passable to ugly, and being blown up to a large size makes it worse.

 

[Mikael Soderholm]

Well, I guess your enjoyment, and opinion, depends on how you approach it.
I knew it wasn't a straight forward documentary, like the excellent BBC shows by Francis Whatley, but more of a Baz Luhrmann stream of conciousness thing, and I loved the way it told me a story of Bowie's spiritual journey and finding wisdom, and love, by the way the interview quotes were chosen, and cut.
I would have liked more unseen material, but as the film went on, the pictures meant less, and the words more, sung or spoken.
I would love a companion piece with more background, more unseen material and more information, but I loved the format, and message, of Moonage Daydream, and found it very Bowie-esque in the way it portrayed him, and put its message forward, in that it didn't really show, or tell, what it was actually doing.
But I can understand those looking for a traditional documentary were disappointed.

 

[Colin Jacobson]

Well, I guess your enjoyment, and opinion, depends on how you approach it.
I knew it wasn't a straight forward documentary, like the excellent BBC shows by Francis Whatley, but more of a Baz Luhrmann stream of conciousness thing, and I loved the way it told me a story of Bowie's spiritual journey and finding wisdom, and love, by the way the interview quotes were chosen, and cut.
I would have liked more unseen material, but as the film went on, the pictures meant less, and the words more, sung or spoken.
I would love a companion piece with more background, more unseen material and more information, but I loved the format, and message, of Moonage Daydream, and found it very Bowie-esque in the way it portrayed him, and put its message forward, in that it didn't really show, or tell, what it was actually doing.
But I can understand those looking for a traditional documentary were disappointed.

I didn't expect a standard "this happened and then this happened" documentary. I knew it'd be something more abstract.

I still found it to be annoying and incoherent.

It's more about how clever the director is than a real journey through Bowie's life and career, especially because it comes across as intensely simplistic.

Bowie was too complicated to get rendered in such a one-dimensional manner.

 

[JoeStemme]

MOONAGE DAYDREAM is now available on VOD. My take:

The title of Brett Morgen's immersive MOONAGE DAYDREAM tips the viewer off that this is going to be a woozy, spacey mind-trip. Morgen immediately wallops the audience with a dizzying visual montage with various film clips from everything from movies like METROPOLIS and THIS ISLAND EARTH to assorted ephemera; It's scored with mix of songs and sound effects. Morgen calls these “Musical mash-ups”, of which there are several (be forewarned those susceptible to sensory overload). It opens with the first of David Bowie's personas - the Space Oddity/Major Tom/Ziggy.

While not as frenetic as the Mash-ups, the bulk of the Documentary is similarly intense. There are no captions labeling the clips or songs. One never even sees a single record jacket, album cover or CD case. It's somewhat chronological, but, never tied down by a specific time or era. Clips from Bowie's public career are interspersed at will with private footage and artifacts including his vast personal artwork - much of it never having been seen before. One minute Ziggy and the Spider's From Mars are on stage in concert, the next, a fast-forward to home movies of Bowie years later on holiday in Asia -- and then it can wind backwards to some childhood memory.

It's a heady mix, but what ties it together are a series of interviews Bowie gave over the decades. The impression many have of Bowie is one of an ever-changing artist who used his evolving identities to completely mask the man inside. Remarkably these audio, video and film clips show that Bowie was often quite open about why he always seemed to be putting on an “act”. He was his own canvas - often involving complete transformations with makeup, hair and clothing. He didn't mind revealing it to his fans. He reveled in it. His most successful period commercially was in the 80s when he let the facade down and was 'just' a pop star. The implication here is that this was Bowie almost taking a break from himself. From his constant re-invention.

Morgen's method has a hypnotic effect. Even if he intransigently refuses to provide full biographical details, Morgen does give a true sense of a lifetime. A life lived to the fullest The barrage of sound and vision manages to give the illusion of events and experiences that Bowie lived through even if the concentration is mainly on his work of the 70s and 80s. It's as if Morgen is inviting to see what Bowie saw from his eyes. It's asks a lot of the viewer. VH1's Behind The Music, this ain't.


Not everything works here. Some of the clips do become repetitive. The strong focus on just two decades of Bowie's career does leave out his early pre-fame musical work, and his life in the 90s and beyond is given short-shrift. However, the overall effect is quite persuasive. One has to be committed to Bowie to fully appreciate what Morgen has achieved here - and, it's both considerable and a great tribute to one of rock's greatest icons. One of the finest examinations of a musician on film.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

HTF official review:

Moonage Daydream Blu-ray Review

Director Brett Morgen (also credited as the film’s writer, producer and editor) clearly has a passion for the work of David Bowie, but his survey of the subject comes across more as a mixtape of ideas he found interesting rather than as a cohesive work. Post DisclaimerSome of our content … Read...

www.hometheaterforum.com

 

[JoeStemme]

The review is clearly misinformed when it states: "It doesn’t have any revelatory, never-before-scene footage; instead, it draws from previously available live recordings and television interviews." There is never-before-seen footage from Bowie's private archives.
And, I profoundly disagree with the author saying there are no new insights nor a purpose to it's "mixtape" strategy.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

I appreciate you bringing the typo to my attention; it has since been corrected.

I believe you may be misinterpreting the statement; I wasn’t suggesting that there was no new footage in the film at all, but rather, that I did not feel the film contained any *revelatory* never-before-seen footage, as might be exemplified by a film like “Get Back.” But ultimately, whether someone finds the new footage to be a revelation is a matter of opinion. Whether one finds the film insightful or successful is a matter of opinion. I have offered mine and am happy to agree to disagree on that and other points.