David Bowie Is, film review: A strange and unsatisfactory documentary
The film is a cross between a conventional documentary and a guided tour of a gallery
Your support helps us to tell the story
From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.
At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.
The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.
Your support makes all the difference.This is the film of the exhibition – a documentary based around the hugely successful David Bowie show, organised by the Victoria and Albert Museum.
It plays like an Open University capsule.
The curators Victoria Broackes and Geoffrey Marsh take us through the show. They have recruited various interviewees, among them the writer Hanif Kureishi, who tells us that the post-war Britain in which Bowie grew up was “very, very boring”, plus the critic Paul Morley and the artist Jeremy Deller.
We follow Bowie as he moves from suburbia to Soho and from there to international stardom. The exhibition is stuffed with intriguing artefacts, everything from Bowie’s youthful drawings and costumes to the letter from September 1965, in which David Jones’s change of name to “Bowie” (after the “Bowie” knife) is announced. There is footage of him as a mime artist, recordings of interviews he gave over the years and an analysis of his movie career by the historian Christopher Frayling. The film itself, for all the richness of its content, is a strange and unsatisfactory hybrid – a cross between a conventional documentary and a guided tour of a gallery.
Join our commenting forum
Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies
Comments