Moonage Daydream | Remembering an Icon

As we pass the first few weeks of January we come to two musical landmarks. What would have been David Bowie’s 78th birthday and the 9th year anniversary of his death, only two days apart from each other. We’re in a cinematic landscape at the moment of musical biopics that only scratch the surface and seem to be the mainstay of what superhero films occupied in the 2010s. The easily predictable and digestible stories with an endless selection of celebrities to choose from for the foreseeable future. Even Bowie’s status hasn't been able to avoid a biopic with the Bowie estate disapproved Stardust (2020) which wasn't even permitted Bowie music. The world needed a way to understand David Bowie after his death and not through some surface level, empty biopic.

But a few years later Moonage Daydream was released, directed by Brett Morgen who directed Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck. Described as a documentary by most but I see Moonage Daydream more as an experimental journey through who Bowie was as a human, an artist and the many philosophies he lived by. It doesn't abide by any regular talking heads interviews but instead is a colourful collage of interviews and audio clips of Bowie talking about how he quantifies his artistic worth throughout his career, how he never bought a house because he never wants to be settled in one place. This of course changes when he meets Iman in one of the many tearjerker scenes in the film with the Word on a Wing montage. 

There is a clear sequence of events, that being Bowie’s career from Ziggy Stardust to his time in West Berlin, through his Lets Dance era and time in the mainstream throughout the 80s, eventually meeting Iman and finally his death. This is all mixed together with animated sequences of Bowie describing his fears of developing schizophrenia like his brother Terry, his many characters that he's portrayed over the years and why he chose to perform behind personas until his Berlin trilogy. There's also of course many performances on the screen and on stage over the years all colour graded to match this kaleidoscope lens that we watch the film through.

We dip back and forth so perfectly edited between a fresh faced Ziggy Stardust experiencing the death of Ziggy Stardust to Bowie at age 50 singing Space Oddity, 25 years later with a massive audience still there supporting him after many evolutions. 

As we near the end of the documentary there's no sequence of “DAVID BOWIE DEAD AT 69” read by a news anchor or fans crying, making funeral shrines or writing epitaphs in Brixton.  Instead we go out with faint sounds from Bowie’s swan project, Blackstar and a quote “I'm dying, you are dying, second by second, all is transient. Does it matter? Do I bother? Yes, I do Life is fantastic, it never ends, it only changes flesh to stone to flesh, and 'round and 'round, bеst keep walking.” This quote alone says everything that Bowie stood for as an artist,  that constant shift of moving forward, forever evolving. It's very inspirational as a Bowie fan but for anyone who wants to achieve anything, pushing the boat out and always going just outside of your comfort zone. It’s one I think about all the time.

Written by Michael Tasker | IG: @thegoldenecstasy | LB: Haelcim