In the spotlight is a shy chameleon-turned-pop Da Vinci: KATE MUIR freaks out at a psychedelic banquet of David Bowie footage in Moonage Daydream
MOONAGE DAYDREAM
Valuation: 
As well as a treat, music fans are in for a psychedelic banquet of Bowie recordings – after the first documentary authorized by the singer’s estate premiered at the Cannes Film Festival last night.
An immersive journey into David Bowie’s sound and vision, Moonage Daydream will leave you amazed by his creative genius throughout his 50-year career.
While the newsreel footage of events surrounding Bowie is outdated, he himself is amazingly ahead of the game. Time has not changed him, as he wrote in Changes.
“Do you like girls or boys? It’s confusing these days,” reads one of his prescient lyrics, and it’s entertaining to see Bowie in early interviews with troubled journalists who seem unable to get a handle on this bisexual chameleon. He is strange to them, the man who fell to the earth.
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At first, Bowie seems strangely shy and reserved. The singer’s costumed personalities, from Major Tom to Ziggy Stardust, the Skinny White Duke and Aladdin Sane, erupt one by one on the big screen. He admits that the characters allow him to hide his loneliness and his true self, which comes into its own towards the end of the film.
Moonage Daydream was directed, edited and written over five years by Brett Morgen, who previously directed a documentary about Kurt Cobain.
Morgen gained access to more than five million assets from the Bowie estate and incorporated 48 of his songs into the film. It’s the soundtrack to half a century of our lives.
The juxtaposition of visuals is like a drug: fans bathed in tears, eyeliner and awe as Bowie parades in a crotch-length silk kimono; or moments where, like Jackson Pollock, he wears splatter paint in a waistcoat and then slips into an exquisitely tailored light blue suit. The kaleidoscopic journey leads inevitably towards death in the recordings of Blackstar, Bowie’s final album.
Neither Bowie’s music nor his face ever gets old, and his magnetic effect is on display as he rides up an escalator, leaving the passengers descending, one by one, turning in amazement.
Alter Ego: Bowie appears as Ziggy Stardust
Morgen explores Bowie’s musical and artistic inspirations rather than his personal life, although there is a touching moment when Bowie, in his mid-40s, marries Somali-born supermodel Iman and doesn’t want to leave her to tour, saying: “How many precious moments am I ready to give away at 45?”
The singer died in 2016 at the age of 69 and declined a funeral or memorial service. Moonage Daydream is probably how it would like to be remembered, in electric blue, on screen: an androgynous Leonardo da Vinci of pop, endlessly videos, animations, paintings, lyrics, concerts, albums… and a bunch of Sounds create wacky philosophical statements. Enjoy.
Moonage Daydream hits theaters later this year