Film review: Moonage daydream “140 minutes of rock rhythmic impressionism”

Acclaimed

documentaries rarely say anything new about the person portrayed, but when I first heard that the film was created by creative Yankee Brett Morgen, I was excited.

It was he who created sparkling life in two other prominent deaths: Kurt Cobain from Nirvana in "Cobain: Montage of heck" and Hollywood mogul Robert Evans in "The kid stays in the picturer".

But it's clear, here the stakes were higher, at least for me, whose entire cerebral cortex is wallpapered with Bowie posters.

"Moonage daydream"

is like a rock concert with unusually talented and interesting interludes.

A jukebox marinated in the Bowian, existential theories of becoming: We must embrace the chaos in our lives, instead of constantly trying to plan it away.

Never being still, exposing ourselves to constant challenges (thoughts that in and of themselves make one's own life feel quite stagnant).

Bowie is the seeker who managed to make great art out of his curiosity, a seeker who doesn't want to get there, just keep looking.

"I hate wasting days," he says towards the end of the film, when his days are about to ebb.

that before?

"Moonage daydream" certainly moves forward in time - from the calfish optimism of the first album to the dull weltschmerz of the last album - but around the given axis of time revolves a narrative and cutting work that is associative in the same way as human thinking.

All of Bowie's shades exist alongside each other, just as we are all our ages at the same time.

Neat.

We get the expected music videos, film clips, interview clips, howling fans and so on but are also showered with the icon's own sources of inspiration (from John Coltrane to Friedrich Nietzsche), and get to take part in his private creations (watercolours, video art etc.).

All framed by Bowie's own voice.

Naked, honest, reflective.

A total of 140 minutes of rock rhythmic impressionism.

If it hasn't been

made clear before in this slightly newly redeemed text, "'Moonage daydream'" is a pure idol portrait - there is nothing here that binds - but at the same time such a well-formulated and sensitive one that I devour everything with guts and hair.

"Moonage daydream" is most of all an uplifting reminder that David Robert Jones, as his real name was, was not only an insanely talented musician and songwriter, he was also a well-read philosopher, postmodern thinker and all-round artist.

A true renaissance man.

A preacher.

Probably from another planet.

the grave or possibly from heaven.

As he sings in the first line of his last hit, the prophetic "Lazarus":

"Look up here, I´m in heaven".

Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead.

Brett Morgen brings David Bowie to life.

At least for a while.