Music documentaries can be strange beasts. It has seemed over the past few years that they either became a tabloid doco where a filmmaker sets out to expose an artist or they become a vanity affair where the main aim is to showcase an artist’s career or in some tragic cases simply boost album sales.
American filmmaker Brett Morgen has done what he can to try and buck those trends. His film Cobain: Montage Of Heck was one of the best music docos ever made as it not only brilliantly captured the highs of the career of Kurt Cobain but also chartered the lows that eventually led to his demise.
Morgen’s latest film though even makes Montage of Heck pale into insignificance. In fact to call Moonage Daydream a doco is almost an insult in itself. It isn’t just a film, it’s not even just a cinematic masterpiece – it is actually a cinematic experience that no music lover should miss. It is so good and so different to anything that we have ever seen before that it will potentially change the music doco genre forever.
When Morgen sat down with the idea to construct a film/doco that would do justice to the career and life of the legendary David Bowie he knew that he would have to do something very, very different – it just wouldn’t be Bowie-esque if he didn’t. What he has created here though is something very, very special and something I must say had me absolutely amazed for the entire film.
I find it hard to explain what Morgen has done to make Moonage Daydream so different. He basically took tracks from different points of Bowie’s career and put them back to back like a playlist. From there he then built his own visuals to go along with the tracks, he has done that using everything from footage to Bowie’s life through to visuals that he has built that wouldn’t look out of place in an art installation and even magic moments from films such as Labyrinth and Disney’s own Fantasia.
It didn’t surprise me when I had the chance to catch up with Morgen while he was in Melbourne for the Melbourne International Film Festival that he told me that this film didn’t come together like most documentaries do. Moonage Daydream came together like a jigsaw puzzle… that was his exact words to me. Morgen knew that he wanted to make a film that celebrated the life of Bowie but at the beginning had absolutely no idea what to do. So to get the ball rolling he just jumped on a train and took a trip – it was while he was on that trip that he had the idea of putting the film together like a jigsaw puzzle – every piece – the track, visuals and interviews – would eventually fit together while still appearing like a kaleidoscope going its own way.
Linking those tracks and visuals together are interviews and some never before soon thoughts and conversations of and with Bowie. There are no talking heads interviews littering this film, instead the narration is largely the thoughts of Bowie himself – and some people out there maybe surprised just how deep a lot of those thoughts are. I found that many of those thoughts and conversations were thought provoking and inspirational to the point where some of them have stayed with me and I hope I can keep using them as mantras in my own life.
So profound are the thoughts of Bowie throughout this documentary that the film itself becomes the perfect thing to throw on when a time comes in your own life where you need inspiration. Moonage Daydream shows that even from beyond the grave David Bowie is going to play a very important part in inspiring the next generation of young artists, especially if they are willing to be a little different to the norm.
I have never seen a doco like Moonage Daydream before. It feels like Brett Morgen has created some kind of magical jigsaw that when all put together pays a beautiful tribute to one of the most creative and inspirational musicians of this generation. It is very little wonder that Bowie’s family have fully endorsed this film – the creativity that Morgen shows with this film mirrors that creativity that made Bowie so well loved.
I found Moonage Daydream to be the kind of film that will be loved and enjoyed by hardcore fans of Bowie and is a great introduction to Bowie, his life and music, for anyone that is newcomer. This is one of the best music docos that I have ever seen in my life, the excitement that it generates has never been recreated before and this will ensure that Bowie’s legacy will live on for generations to come.
Moonage Daydream is currently available on a number of different streaming platforms.