Forget the traditional films around the life of rock stars, stories with often chronological and conventional narration. In Moonage Daydreampresented out of competition at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival on Monday May 23, American director Brett Morgen breaks the traditional frameworks of the biopic to dive deep into the intimacy of David Bowie thanks to an explosion (the term is not too strong) of archival footage that beats to the rhythm of the glam-rock star’s tracks.
From the very first minutes, the viewer witnesses Brett Morgen’s radical choice: not to pose a voice-over on the images and to give free rein to a profusion of performances on stage and interviews of David Bowie with journalists of the time. . The succession of colored shots gives a psychedelic aspect to this feature film, which only respects the DNA of the creator of Ziggy Stardust.
The strength of this documentary on the interpreter of heroes Where Space Oddity is above all to dig into the creative work and complex personality of David Bowie rather than to tell his life story. The unpublished archives to which Brett Morgen had access are not divided chronologically but by themes (the creative process, art and money, etc.). No Wikipedia-style chronological record, but a merry mess that oscillates in time and space. Even if at three periods of his life (at 25, 35 and 45 years old), David Bowie explains in front of the camera how he gains inner peace with age, without letting go of his will to create.
Moonage Daydreamnamed after a piece of Ziggy Stardust, Bowie’s fifth album in 1972, however, does not escape some of the usual defects of films of the genre.
It was Bowie’s family who opened the treasure chest filled with unpublished archives to Brett Morgen. This American, who had already signed the documentary Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck, so be careful not to darken the picture too much. Whenever she speaks on screen, the British legend who died in January 2016 appears at her best, claiming to live her best life during her first successes on stage in the United Kingdom, then during her exiles in Los Angeles, West Berlin and Southeast Asia.
On the other hand, nothing in the selections of interviews on the addictions of David Bowie and his taste for luxury. Even if the few images of him sprawled in an XXL bed and being served cocktails on the chain have the merit of existing. At last, Moonage Daydream drags on in its last part. In the last half hour of this long biopic (2h20), the ultra-fast rhythm of the images scrolling on the screen threatens to intoxicate the spectator.
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Gender : documentary
Director: Brett Morgan
Music production: Tony Visconti
Actor : david bowie
Country : States-United
Release date : September 2022
Duration : 2h20
Distributer : Universal Picture Content Group
Synopsis: Moonage Daydream is a cinematic odyssey through the creative and musical work of David Bowie. Revealing unpublished archive footage, the documentary directed by Brett Morgen required five years of work, with the support and complicity of Bowie’s family and collaborators.