Should we see this new documentary dedicated to David Bowie?

A documentary awkwardly salutes the protean genius of the English singer, six years after his disappearance.

" How does Mick Jagger, at his age, sing Brown Sugar night after night? Me, it would bore me to death ". David Bowie once said. We could not better summarize the career of the Englishman: always on the move, fleeing any formula and the boredom of routine, incessantly in search of adventures, new sounds, moreover creative. Lately, between the films dedicated to the Velvet Underground by Todd Haynes and the Beatles by Peter Jackson, we were now accustomed to excellence, to the intelligence of their points of view and their artistic choices. This is precisely all that Moonage Daydream lacks: a filmmaker's gaze. However, the trajectory of his subject offered stimulating material: infinitely curious about all forms of art, attentive to the avant-garde, inventing himself according to the eras of the characters - Ziggy Stardust, The Thin White Duke -, mastering like little the art of media presence and absence, his taste for theatricality , lucid as little about the future of the music industry (from the start of the 2000s, he predicted that music, with the advent internet, would become as easily available as “ electricity or running water .”). In short, there was enough to build a sensational documentary, especially since most of its historical creative partners (Brian Eno, Iggy Pop, Mike Garson, Carlos Alomar, Tony Visconti, Reeves Gabrels) are still alive. Instead, against a backdrop of archival footage mainly from the tour of the Ziggy Stardust era, we hear a few comments from Bowie, not uninteresting, but without any perspective, any fruitful echo. The editing, exhaustingly incoherent, jumps from era to era, but without any narrative or thematic logic. We are also amazed that the last sequence of his life, carefully thought out like the previous ones, all in erasure - with the exception of three stage appearances , all for charity - and which will see him publish two fascinating albums, The Next Day and above all the ultimate Blackstar , is completely ignored. He staged, in a moving dramaturgy, his ultimate obliteration in a sublime creative fireworks display. To hope to know David Bowie, or what he wanted to show the world, it will finally be enough to listen to him, from the first folk stammerings to the funereal final bouquet.