Captures the vibe of the artist really well and it paints an effective picture of what drove him to make his art. However, I think it’s kind of a mess. It can’t seem to stay and focus on a topic, the editing of this thing is all over the place. There’s a general chronological structure but it deviates with interludes, performances, experimental passages or side topics whenever it feels like it. On top of that I have no idea what it’s trying to communicate visually half of the time, Morgen did a much better job with that during Cobain: Montage of Heck. For a movie about his artistry, its exploration of the concepts and alter egos found in his music is a bit thin. There’s also not nearly enough attention paid to his career resurgence in the 90s (or his final album, for that matter). So, I guess it works decently as a celebration of Bowie, but the way it’s handled here feels shallow and incomplete. It’s more experimental than a typical rockstar biopic but it falls into the same traps of what makes a lot of those films uninteresting. Give me a critical perspective on his music/career, an in-depth, emotional look into his personal life, some thoughts about his musical/intellectual contributions, etc.. With all of its flashy, kaleidoscopic imagery and music it certainly feels like I’ve been on a journey, but nothing about it registered to me as memorable.
4.5/10
I’ve seen similar music docs about artists I know better than Bowie and enjoyed them much more. As someone relatively unfamiliar with Bowie, I found this film nearly impenetrable narratively, and several of the things I do know about Bowie literally never came up. The movie is a whole vibe, I never got it.
"....I don't particularly feel."
This belongs at the top of each and every one of those 'movies about loneliness' lists on this website.
BOWIE was a relentlessly and dangerously deep explorer of thought despite always being drawn to emotion. His whole life was to see himself from the perspective of a father figure so he could understand who he was. This struggle for multiple identities is, I think, the core of Bowie and is something this film acknowledges in spades! He's also an antidote to England but still for English people purely because of his obsession with 'escape' or 'fantasy' in his endless expression.
I genuinely cannot fault any of this film - ridiculously inspiring and adventurous.
Between this and 'Jane', Brett Morgen is such a remarkable, potent maker of documentaries.
Shout by Patrick KellyVIP 8BlockedParent2022-09-13T03:54:51Z
A narrative of the single most self-reinventing artist told through their own words and art. If you're a Bowie fan or curious, this was great. If you're not, it's maybe an opportunity to understand the complicated person behind everything, but the lack of overall structure might be too much for some people. I loved it.