Criterion Challenge week 5: Moonage Daydream (2022)
Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
Moonage Daydream (2022) is a unique documentary that offers a deep dive into the life of musical legend, David Bowie.
The Criterion Collection is an American film distributing company since 1984 that has produced and distributed over 1200 films. Although it is an American company, the collection holds many foreign movies. Not only does the Criterion Collection house 1726 movies, spanning decades, genres, and directors, but it also restores films, some even over 100 years old.
For the fifth year in a row, Letterboxd user @benvsthemovies has put together their annual Criterion Challenge, which consists of 52 categories and one film per week of the year. While you do not have to follow a weekly schedule to complete the challenge, many participants, including myself, will. The goal is to watch a different movie from the collection to fill each category between Jan. 1 and Dec. 31, 2025. The first four categories of this year include films from specific Criterion boxsets, films from the year you were born, films directed by Robert Altman, and personal favorites.
The category for week five was to pick from “Great Soundtracks,” a list on the collection website. After browsing a few options, I watched Moonage Daydream (2022), directed by Brett Morgen. At first, I assumed this movie was a biopic about singer David Bowie, but I was interested to find out that it was a film telling the story of his music and career using never-before-seen archive footage of Bowie himself.
While I have always found documentaries challenging to review, I thoroughly enjoyed watching this one. Like most films, documentaries, especially on the subject of a pop-culture figure, tend to be very subjective. The tipping point on whether or not a documentary is “good” (I think) tends to be whether or not it is a respectful and accurate representation of the subject.
In my opinion, this film wholeheartedly accomplished this. Because this movie is entirely made up of archival interview clips of David Bowie describing his work and own life instead of present-day reflective interviews of people who knew him or studied his career, it was unique from other, more traditional documentaries.
The movie describes the public opinion of Bowie at multiple points in his career, focusing on how he responded to all the attention and controversy. It is colorful, absurd, and thought-provoking, and it has a fantastic soundtrack full of Bowie’s greatest hits, fulfilling the requirement set by the Criterion Challenge. Bowie was a musical and, arguably, historical legend. If you enjoy his discography, even passively, you’ll enjoy this film.
This movie is long (over two hours) and certainly feels that way. The pacing was sometimes a little strange, mostly as it recapped different eras of Bowie’s career. Because of that, there was a point where I thought the film had ended, only to check the runtime and see there was a full hour left.
The movie also is a very vague, aesthetic look at the life of a musical legend and does not talk much about the technical side of his music nor the effects his art had on the entertainment and music industries. These were my only critiques, however, and since I have always been a Bowie fan, this documentary was an easy four-and-a-half stars for me.