What is a documentary maker supposed to do when someone as gifted and empathic as Francis Whately has already covered most of the Bowie bases with three detailed and hypnotic films about different defining periods of the man’s life and career? Five Years, Finding Fame and The Last Five Years are texturally complex films that bear repeated viewings. And there’s another Whately film due out next year that will no doubt definitively nail the Berlin years too.
Maybe Jonathan Stiasny film should have been called "The Less Raked-Over Years", rather than the more grandiose The Final Act – given that only the last 20 minutes of its 90-minute running time actually covers the last two albums, The Next Day and Blackstar. Another unfortunate decision Stiasny made was to use the somewhat overused and flimsy connective tissue of space travel and the universe as an extended metaphor throughout. Clearly Bowie himself even wearied of this angle, once quipping, “I’ve absolutely no ambition or interest to go into space whatsoever – I’m scared going down to the end of the garden.”
But having said that, dear David did like to have his space cake and eat it. After all, he resurrected Major Tom for "Ashes to Ashes" at the beginning of the 1980s, and then one last time in 2016 when the Major’s skeleton is seen in an astronaut suit on some distant world in Johan Renck’s moody video for Blackstar. But do we really need astronaut Chris Hadfield to tell us about the cosmic fate of all black stars, plus a bunch of other space related stuff?
And then we have Earl Slick saying with apparent surprise, “He looks really good on camera when he’s singing.” And Tony Visconti’s young studio engineer Erin Tonkon proclaiming, “He always, like, smelled so good.” Superfan-for-hire Gary Kemp leans forward to tell us for the umpteenth time how seeing Ziggy on Top of the Pops changed his life. But don’t get me wrong. I’m not blaming these contributors, whose love of DB is no less sincere than my own. I’m just suggesting that such commonplace utterances belong on the cutting room floor when you’ve only got 90 minutes to tell the story of a great artist’s half a century of groundbreaking creativity. For how much more Tonkon might have said had she been asked specific questions about Bowie’s process in the studio!
A particular low point of pointlessness was Melody Maker writer Jon Wilde reading extracts from his review of the second Tin Machine album. A review that ends with these words addressing Bowie directly: "Now for God’s sake, sit down, man. You’re a fucking disgrace." This was a shocking reminder of just how vicious and personal the British music press used to be. Wilde isn’t quite able to disguise his delight at the fact that his performatively abusive review made Bowie cry at the time: who said this kind of thing began with social media?
Maybe anecdotes from “some berk from the Melody Maker” – as Wilde refers to himself – are one of the few sources of fresh content available for films about Bowie. For some of the usual contributors didn’t show this time (Gail Anne Dorsey and Carlos Alomar spring to mind), while others gamely tried hard to come at old anecdotal material in a fresh way (Dana Gillespie, Tony Visconti, Mike Garson and Rick Wakeman).
So, what was new? Well, The Buddha of Suburbia and Earthling were better served than they have been by previous documentaries, thanks to colourful contributions from Hanif Kureishi and Goldie, respectively. But the gravity of that blackhole/black star extended metaphor never quite holds everything together. And so when we finally arrive at that "nine years later" moment of 2013 when Bowie partially, invisibly, enigmatically returns to the public eye for The Next Day and Blackstar, only 20 minutes of the film remain. But once again, you’d be better served by Whately’s The Last Five Years for a detailed overview of the euphoria and then tragedy of this period anyway.
The bottom line on "meaning" and Bowie is that the man put up signposts for every rabbit hole fans might care to scramble down. Take this whole "black star" business. As well as being the void or all voids, a black star is the medical term for a particularly aggressive form of cancer, "Black Star" was an Elvis single, and Blackstar is a brand of a guitar amp Bowie may or may not have used. In fact the other day, I saw a striking 2012 painting of an empowered black woman by Kerry James Marshall entitled "Black Star 2". And Bowie would almost certainly have been aware of Marshall’s groundbreaking work. So, yeah – enough with all the shots of the cosmos, and Mr Spaceman stuff.
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