BEFORE: Continuing my 3-day look at Bowie, David Bowie carries over from "The Last Five Years" and a few band members carry over as well. After this, I'll have just 10 films to go in the documentary chain, and they'll all be in that sort of hard rock/heavy metal vein. So the end is finally in sight.
THE PLOT: Combining footage from interviews with the late great David Bowie and contributions from those who knew him personally, this documentary celebrates the illustrious life of one of the greatest artists to ever grace the stage.
AFTER: I don't know, I kind of expected a little more from this one, like maybe a by-the-numbers breakdown on Bowie's influence. Or I would have accepted something that went by topic, like, #1. Fashion, here's how Bowie changed the world of fashion, by wearing THIS and THAT. Then #2, sexual politics, here's how dressing like a woman shocked and changed the world, and then he shocked the world again when he revealed he was straight (mostly), and so on.
This is just your standard doc, cobbled together from a bunch of archive footage, much of which I saw before in yesterday's film, because that one couldn't stay on a focused topic, either. I guess when a rock star dies, everyone comes out of the woodwork to see what they can assemble from whatever's in the news archives, and if they can turn that into a 90-minute documentary, that's what they're gonna do.
This film starts out by interviewing a number of Bowie's live-in girlfriends and romantic partners, and I honestly don't see how that relates to changing the world. Did he set out to make love to the world, one woman at a time? No, he did not. (Well, maybe...) You can't give a documentary a title like this and then just say, "Well, everybody enjoyed his music, so I guess he changed the world!" Entertaining the world and changing it are not synonymous. And celebrating his life doesn't go far toward making that point that you can't seem to make. Same question for finally learning why Bowie had two differently-colored eyes - what does that have to do with changing the world?
I'm honestly surprised that this film didn't come from the same director or the same production company as the other doc I watched with a similar title, "How the Beatles Changed the World". It uses the exact same approach, which includes NOT featuring ANY of the original music tracks from the artist in question. That's a huge omission, right? Like, the biggest? Admittedly there are a few clips here of Bowie singing, but it's just the vocal track, not the music, because I guess that they'd have to pay for, and this was obviously made on the cheap. Like, the cheapest. I don't know how somebody thought they could get away with talking about Bowie's music and not playing any of it.
Instead, we learn here that Bowie's singing style borrowed quite liberally from Anthony Newley (when you play them back-to-back it's much easier to recognize), and that it was much easier for him to perform on stage when he was playing a character, hence the Ziggy Stardust and various other personas. Even so, it was a very cheap trick for Bowie to announce his last performance DURING that performance, and then clarify later that it was only the last performance AS THAT CHARACTER. I prefer to think that he really wanted to get off the big giant hamster wheel that is recording, touring and promotion, and just couldn't find a way to make a clean break. Because honestly, I've been seeing a lot of that in these documentaries.
NITPICK POINT: There's a clip of Bowie's old grade school, and the kids who are studying there today are shown learning who David Bowie is, only since he never did a podcast or had his own YouTube unboxing videos, they don't seem to care. They even pronounce his name "BOUGH-ie", as if "BOUGH" rhymes with "COW", and not "BOW-ie", as if "BOW" rhymes with "LOW", as God intended. Can't some teacher step in and correct these kids? This is important, damn it.
Also starring Angie Bowie (last seen in "Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars"), Breege Collins, Mary Finnigan, Paul Gambaccini, Dana Gillespie, Bob Harris, Iman, Clive Langer, Laurence Myers, Paul Nicholas, Iggy Pop, Chris Sullivan, George Underwood, and the voice of David Wartnaby with archive footage of Sterling Campbell (also carrying over from "David Bowie: The Last Five Years"), Gail Ann Dorsey (ditto), Reeves Gabrels (ditto), Mike Garson (ditto), Catherine Russell (ditto), Earl Slick (ditto), Mick Ronson (also last seen in "Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars"), Ringo Starr (ditto), Mick Jagger (last seen in "Mr. Dynamite: The Rise of James Brown"), Elton John (last seen in "20 Feet from Stardom"), John Lennon (ditto), Annie Lennox (last seen in "Clive Davis: The Soundtrack of Our Lives"), Lady Gaga (last seen in "Gaga: Five Foot Two"), Yoko Ono (last seen in "Janis: Little Girl Blue"), Lou Reed (last seen in "Michael Jackson's Journey from Motown to Off the Wall"), Andy Warhol (ditto), Marc Bolan, Russell Harty (last seen in "The Kids Are Alright"), Duncan Jones, Lindsay Kemp, Andrew Lloyd Webber, Anthony Newley, Johnnie Ray, Hunt Sales, Tony Sales.
RATING: 4 out of 10 acting roles
No comments:
Post a Comment