What’s your first memory of David Bowie? Is it of Ziggy Stardust, the mullet-haired, leotard wearing alien rockstar from far beyond the stars? Or is it of Jareth, the menacing-but-mostly-harmless Goblin King from Jim Henson’s Labyrinth? Maybe it’s simply of a man with bright orange hair and a Union Jack coat, or a long-haired older man singing his heart out in a sweatshirt on VH1. The possibilities are endless, with the Brixton-born superstar’s identity morphing countless times over the course of a fifty-year career.

The man behind Halloween Jack and the Thin White Duke is maybe one of the most-examined and most-talked about figures in music history because of these changes, never sitting still long enough for anyone to really figure him out. But no one has ever had such complete and total access to his expansive career as Brett Morgen, director of the new documentary, Moonage Daydream. The first to be sanctioned by Bowie’s estate, this new film changes what it means to create a rock-and-roll documentary, doing exactly what the Starman did best: throwing out the rulebook and operating on its own sexy, glittery, no-holds-barred terms.

It’s difficult to grasp just who David Bowie was, or how to define his career and influence in anything less than a Shakespearean monologue, and Morgen seems to understand that. To call Moonage Daydream a documentary in the traditional sense would almost be an insult to what’s been created — a literal space odyssey, if you want to be cheesy about it. The film isn’t just a combination of archival footage of the musician, nor does it bother with hearing input from those who worked with him or followed his career in life. It smashes footage and photos of the star together with disparate bits and bobs of anything you can think of, from oddball documentary footage to clips of Nosferatu and Metropolis, an amalgamation of influences and inspirations that captures the kind of chaos Bowie sought to embrace in his lifetime.

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Image via NEON

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This is not a film that slows down once it gets started. Whether you’re familiar with Bowie or not, you’ll be dragged along like soup cans tied to the back of a bullet train once it leaves the station, with the rocket launching off into the stars from minute one. It assumes you know nothing and everything about Bowie at the same time, which is exactly where it ought to be. Enough has been said about his chart success or the specifics of his film career, and fans know that once you fall in love with him, none of that is ever really the point. Morgen manages to find the core of that real point, which is to explore the creativity behind Bowie’s work, how he constructed himself through his art, in his own words.

To hear Bowie “narrate” the film himself is comforting, like listening to your rock-and-roll grandfather tell you stories about the good old days. Moonage concusses you with the loud stereo of its title song before soothing you with old audio of the singer discussing his process, examining how malleable his approach to writing really was. How did what he was doing with Ziggy Stardust influence what he would later do with Station to Station or Outside, the documentary asks, and what influenced him to create in such a way? The answer changes innumerable times, tied together by the music that made Bowie so beloved to millions the world over.

Morgen digs deep into the archives provided to him by the musician’s estate and pulls out what might be described as a Bowie superfan’s ideal playlist, filled with live recordings and new mixes of iconic tracks that tug at heartstrings the same way a child tugs on their mother’s hand when they’re desperate for something they adore. For anyone not lucky enough to see him in life, Moonage Daydream is the next best thing to seeing him in concert, especially if the film is experienced as it should be: in IMAX, with the sounds of his discography blasting at you in deafening surround sound.

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Image via NEON

That said, Morgen isn’t trying to put too fine a point on any of Bowie’s work, forgoing discussing the reception of his music in favor of letting the man himself take the reins, allowing the audience intimate access into how his perception of the universe (and how that was translated through his work) shifted over time. It avoids the trap of positing any one work as his magnum opus — which often happens with Ziggy Stardust or Heroes, two albums heavily featured in the film — and instead provides a loose timeline of his career, from about the rise (and fall) of Ziggy Stardust to approximately the year 2000.

To cover every aspect of Bowie’s career, including every album or project he produced in those thirty-ish years, Moonage Daydream would have to have been a twelve hour spectacle, and that would probably still leave out some bits here and there. But what is included is a distilled essence of Bowie — not his career, but the man himself — that flips flops around, crossing between years and proving that linear anything never really applied to the existence the Starman made for himself. The ‘70s bleed into the ‘90s into the ‘60s and the ‘80s, with the entire thing framed by black-and-white clips from the music video for “Blackstar,” the second to last single Bowie released before his death.

But Morgen isn’t trying to frame the film as a lead-up to his passing, which is perhaps the reason Moonage Daydream is such an effective portrait of the artist. Anyone who holds Bowie’s legacy in their hearts could tell you that it feels like he never really died, just “went back to his home planet,” as the joke goes. What Morgen has constructed is a tribute, but not one that’s interested in what Bowie left behind — rather, what he achieved in life, as someone who set the bar for changing yourself to fit who you are in the moment.

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Image via NEON

When asked about the countless number of personas he cycled through over the course of his career, Bowie once said, “I don’t make changes to confuse anyone. I’m just searching. That’s what causes me to change. I’m just searching for myself.” Moonage Daydream is a visual representation of that search, or as close as one can get to representing the inner workings of the world’s greatest artist. It’s excessive to the nth degree, a kind of chromesthesia set to guitar from Mick Ronson and bass from Gail Ann Dorsey.

To Morgan’s credit, his chosen material, picked from thousands of hours of footage, is that which usually gets buried under piles of blue-and-red lightning bolts, but is just as representative of Bowie’s existence as a musical chameleon. Audiences are treated to pieces of the Glass Spider tour from 1987 and bombastic cuts of performances from the Earthling era, right alongside footage of interviews and pieces of the handful of films he appeared in over the years. One of the film’s throughlines is a healthy amount of footage from Bowie’s Serious Moonlight era, pulled from a film made when the star was traveling through Asia — not of his concerts, but of his time exploring the area, searching, searching, searching for something that goes unnamed but is felt in every musical note.

If you’ve got any emotional attachment to Bowie at all, there will most certainly be moments where this film reduces you to tears. Mine was just over halfway through, when something about live footage of him performing “Let’s Dance” sent me so far over the edge that I sobbed uncontrollably for the length of it. Maybe it was the energy of it, of feeling like this was my closest chance at getting to see David in concert, or maybe it was just the memories — all those times I danced along to that album in my room, or scream-sang the words in my car as joy flooded through my veins as they collectively sped down the freeway.

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Image via NEON

The fondness and adoration Morgen has for Bowie’s work as an artist is palpable — I mean it in the most affectionate way possible when I say that Moonage feels like a two hour fanedit made for TikTok. Putting exact emotions into words is near impossible, but this film, in all its loud, messy, maximalist glory, feels like how it feels to love David Bowie: to cry when he pops up on the radio, to feel your chest go tight at how much his work has affected your life. It is love personified, a masterwork from a director as dedicated to Bowie’s memory as any fan. It has the heart of the lifelong fan, but also of the fifteen-year-old who’s just discovered him for the first time, the joy and adoration that comes with blasting “Modern Love” on tinny phone speakers off of Spotify.

For someone my age, David Bowie is as integral to the cultural framework of our generation as sliced bread or cell phones. He is inescapable and beloved, whether your parents raised you on Diamond Dogs or you just happened to hear his voice on SpongeBob growing up. His influence and approach to art are what empower me to sit here at my desk, with my blue hair and and my tattoos, and strike out to make something of myself, even though it terrifies the hell out of me with every word I put on the page. His presence — one that remains on this Earth through song and screen and image — enables a kind of strength of being, a camaraderie and a cheeky wink that says, “Go on, do that thing you’ve always dreamed of. I’ve got your back.”

Morgen manages to encapsulate that intimate relationship between artist and audience with Moonage Daydream, using only disparate pieces of footage and some clever illustration to nail exactly what it’s like to adore David Bowie. With this film, Morgen captures the unnameable reason why Bowie means so much to so many — that is to say, his forever immutable presence that makes one believe anything can be achieved if they wade far enough out into the water.

Rating: A+

Moonage Daydream opens in theaters on September 16.