Most documentaries stick to a well trodden layout that works. A few talking heads, some well designed statistical graphics, and a little voiceover helps the director get the audience where they want to go. You don’t need all those devices to make a documentary, but the success rate is more difficult because you have to fully immerse your audience in what you’re doing. Fortunately, Brett Morgen, the June 17, 1994 30 for 30 documentarian, has found success in the doc road less traveled before. And, Robert Frost would be doubly happy that Morgen diverged in the wood again to tell us about one of the world’s renaissance men: David Bowie.
As if Morgen’s task wasn’t difficult enough, Bowie has been the subject of 17 previous documentary films already. So how does the documentarian find an inroad to something different? The answer seems simple in hindsight: take a man who’s lived a lot of his life in front of the camera and public eye, and distill those scenes to show the audience David Bowie’s essence. Instead of every famous contemporary artist talking about how different David Bowie was, Morgen uses Bowie interviews to set up a visual splendor of epic proportions. Yes, we can try to explain art to each other, but when it comes down to it, all art is better experienced than explained. Through these incredible visuals and montages, Moonage Daydream slowly helps the audience enter the mind of the doc’s subject: an artist who thinks about the world in a totally different way. Thoughts lead to images, which lead to abstract meandering, which transform into sound, and end up on stage, with Bowie fans explaining in their own ways how the amazing performer helps them connect to the more artistic parts of their personality. Morgen pulls this amazing feat off where all of this visual information seems meandering but is actually purposeful and ends up leaving David Bowie’s brain in the form of one of his many artistic pursuits, usually music.
Morgen’s bolder method of storytelling also does something most docs struggle to do: it makes an emotional connection. By the end of the first hour, we’re so far inside David Bowie’s head and thought process, we can’t help but empathize with Ziggy Stardust. I started to feel that swell of joy when some new creativity came to him, or the pang of sadness as we learn about Bowie’s inability to connect with people. After about an hour, Morgen has the audience emotionally invested, and slowly changes the doc into a chronological evolution of Bowie’s artistic expression and how that affected his personality after his 20s. The subtle change in style takes you out of the movie a few times, but it helps enrich our understanding of Bowie further, and leads us to the inevitable endpoint of the story: the end of David’s human form. Because, as the doc makes clear, the talented artist views time and place differently than the rest of us.
I hope other people use Brett Morgen’s documentary style in the future. Because when it’s right, it’s as good as any moviemaking out in the world today. The key is, the subject has to be fascinating and constantly changing. I hope Morgen chooses Shia Laboeuf for his next doc subject. THAT’s a fascinating person with all sorts of emotional layers.