Just the notion of seeing Brett Morgen’s film about David Bowie—Moonage Daydream, which premiered last night at Cannes—made me nervous. I’d read variously that the film was a biopic, an “experiential odyssey” about Bowie’s life, an “immersive” experience. And like millions of other people of all kinds all over the world, I had my own view on Bowie—lots and lots of them, actually. The notion of seeing another person trying to make their own kind of art out of Bowie’s preposterous, unbelievable, and inspirational life, frankly, bored me and terrified me at the same time; especially after having listened to him for decades and having watched him in films and seen him live in concert and having read perhaps too much about him and his work.
About 35 seconds into the actual film, though, I left those thoughts and feelings far behind, gripped my armrests, and never really let go: Moonage Daydream—the first film to be officially sanctioned by Bowie’s estate and the result of five years of painstaking research, writing, editing, sound mixing, and deep dive immersion into the entirety of Bowie’s archive of film, music, art, and fashion (some five million assets)—is astounding, bombastic, groundbreaking, electrifying, and among the best films about any artist or musician I’ve ever seen. Writer-director-producer-editor Morgen has taken those five million assets and assembled from them a mesmerizing collage of sound and vision that will entrance and enrich any Bowie fan and, presumably, make new fans of anyone lucky enough to have this be their first real encounter with his world.
Though if you’re looking for a film that holds your hand as it walks you through the important milestones of Bowie’s life—you know: Here’s his childhood home, here’s the part about his early work as a mime, then the breakthrough single “Space Oddity,” then Ziggy, then the Thin White Duke, then Berlin, etc.—this ain’t it. You’ll see amazing footage of all of the above, along with a thousand million other things, and you’ll hear the songs you know and a bunch you probably don’t, and, crucially, certain formative episodes and people in Bowie’s life are highlighted. Perhaps most significantly, Bowie’s close relationship with his half-brother, Terry Burns, who had a profound influence on him but was institutionalized for years with schizophrenia before committing suicide in 1985 is given careful and considered treatment here. Bowie’s cocaine addiction and frenetic nervous state around the time of filming The Man Who Fell to Earth isn’t told via concerned voiceover or Bowie’s later sober reflections on this mad time—it’s told via jump cuts, a manic-panic editing style, and a soundtrack that puts you in the midst of that maelstrom instead of beyond it and above it.
But this isn’t a connect-the-dots biopic. (It’s not even really chronological! While there’s a very broad forward movement from Bowie’s childhood through fame, reinvention, obscurity, and more reinvention, stopping just shy of his death in 2016, we see and hear film and music from Blackstar, his final album, early on, and the film zigzags back and forth through time.) Moonage Daydream is a gloriously immersive kaleidoscopic examination not so much of Bowie’s life here on earth, but of the life he lived inside his head and his heart, which led him to create his art. Instead of telling you about Bowie, it puts you in the midst of his world; instead of teaching you things, it makes you feel the world he lived in.
The fact that it’s big, loud, fragmented, and occasionally chaotic (and a bit long, at two hours and 20 minutes) is even more cause for celebration. The fact that it doesn’t come out in the States until this fall is tragic. Start clearing the calendar now, though.
Moonage Daydream is in theaters in September.