Moonage Daydream

Moonage Daydream

A documentary film. Released in 2022. 140 minutes. Directed by Brett Morgen. I saw it twice in the Imax theater of Toho Cinemas Nagareyama Ootakanomori and at Kinema Junpo Theater.

It depicts the life of the rock musician David Bowie mainly using his own music and words.

Bowie wearing an exotic and fashionable costume in the seventies had looked strange to me, for I had thought that girlish boys had mental disease when I was little. However, the documentary told me the fact that he actually had come out as bisexual and been struggling with social prejudice in those days. I got impressed that he was not only just a rock star but also a person of character. Honestly, I had been not interested in David Bowie until several years ago because I love rock bands like The Rolling Stones, Sex Pistols and Oasis better than solo artists. All the same, I had had his albums Let's Dance and Tonight. The duet "Tonight" with Tina Turner, who passed away last month, was my most favorite among the two albums. I had also thought that "Blue Jean" with a good beat was a signature piece for him for a long time. Although I did not listen to Let's Dance so many times because I did not like the singles "Let's Dance" and "Tonight" cut from the album, yet I regretted that I underestimated the album because though it was rather late, I realized the first song "Modern Love" was really awesome when I listened to it in the film Frances Ha which I watched several years ago. Then I was moved by the wonderful song "'Heroes'" at the end of the movie Jojo Rabbit that I saw at a theater. Afterward, I knew that the song was playing a part in the collapse of the Berlin Wall. I have listened to his other songs since then. His impression has increasingly changed in recent years, so the documentary was perfectly suitable for me.

Tears dropped from my eyes hearing the introduction of "'Heroes'" during watching it. His fans were mostly fashionable and cool. They looked like Bowie's alter ego. How they adored him told me how great Bowie was to them, so I felt ashamed that I could not realize how brilliant he was for a long time.

Moreover, I was pleased as a Japanese when I knew that as well as John Lennon and Freddie Mercury, he liked Japan.

It is a masterpiece of the documentary genre and filled with the cham of David Bowie as not only a performer like a singer and actor but also a human.