Major Tom, Ziggy Stardust, Aladdin Sane, Pierrot, the Fine White Duke, the blind prophet, the alien rocker glam messiah, the alcoholic astronaut, the Neo-expressionist painter who feasts on life. These identities—and countless others—collapse into the same enigmatic signifier: David Bowie. His death marked the end of a lifetime spent relentlessly reinventing himself.
Moonage Daydream stands as a bold cinematic tribute to this chameleon figure, presented out of competition at the most recent Cannes Film Festival. The documentary surveys more than four years of continuous transformation, assembled from thousands of hours of material and completed over five years. Brett Morgen, renowned for Kurt Cobain: The Montage of Heck, directs this exploration of Bowie’s ever-shifting creative landscape. new movie.
atomized parts
Rather than a straightforward biographical narrative, Moonage Daydream pieces together fragments of Bowie’s life. The voice often skims the philosophical and spiritual, with lines such as, “I was a Buddhist on Tuesday and Nietzsche on Friday.” The film presents an ever-changing collage, spanning eras through unseen images, abstract animations, and allusions to a wide range of artists from Méliès to Kandinsky and Pollock. It also foregrounds classic musical performances—from the early Ziggy Stardust and Spiders From Mars era to the 1990s tours accompanying Earthling in the later years.
In total, around 48 songs weave through the film, including an opening homage to Space Oddity and a salute to the Free Festival era. Morgen’s editorial choice reflects a particular curatorial vision; some fans might miss certain arrangements, yet the approach remains striking. Moonage Daydream moves with the rhythm of Bowie’s repertoire over its 140-minute span. It may test some viewers, while die-hard fans will wish for more. There is little doubt that Bowie would approve of the portrayal, as the artist once described his music as an idea pudding and hinted at launching the twenty-first century in 1971.
The central thesis is that Bowie’s life oscillated like a pendulum between the urge to connect with audiences and the drive to distance himself. This push-pull helps explain the Berlin collaborations with Brian Eno, which yielded pop-forward works like Let’s Dance and Modern Love—moments that propelled him to superstardom after years of self-imposed artistic constraints. The public persona began to tilt toward what audiences craved, even as the artist continued to explore new, personal directions.
incomplete portrait
Even as Bowie persisted with experiments and reemerged with fresh energy, Moonage Daydream quiets some of the artist’s personal interventions. The result is a deliberately fragmented portrait that captures the expansive spirit of its subject. Ziggy Stardust, Aladdin Sane, the Blind Prophet, and the many other facets are treated not as fixed milestones but as facets of a larger, evolving mosaic. The film rises as a meditation on a life seen through multiple lenses, a cinematic lens that invites viewers to feel the breadth of Bowie’s existence rather than to reconstruct a single, linear biography.