2/25/21 - Stardust (2020) - 3.5/4-/10
I like the pathos of the film: Bowie’s struggle with his identity and its relation to mental health issues of his brother. The search for artistry with brilliance dancing on the bleeding edge of madness. An intimate portrait of the most amazing, flamboyant, and revolutionary musician at the tip of his amalgamated genesis. Yes, the concept of this film is an exhilarating howl and an electric bolt slashing at our eye...but what we get is a silent pantomime; a vacuous failure at endearment that makes this enigmatic rock god the one thing he cannot be - boring.
It gets lost in its inability to play any Bowie’s music or receive approval from the legitimate real people we base the film on. Couple that with our burgeoning space genius being piled under chain smoking self doubt and wispy unflattering dialogue and the star of possibility quickly dims. I understand the desire to inject toil and see the planning of the rocket ship before it blasts us all into the cosmos; it's a noble endeavor. But even if it was the deepest of truth, the souring of Bowie’s continuing failure to flourish during his star-crossed initial foray into the U.S. of A. deadens and diminishes. I just can’t imagine, true or not, that THE David Bowie was ever so meager, lifeless, and damnably banal. This is a movie - entertain me, Capture Me, THRILL ME! Let me worship at my deity’s feet instead of listlessly withering into his flawed and restrained humanity.
It’s true that it is cut off at the knees. Keeping the musician’s magic locked away and forcing us to interpret his essence through a dark mirror strains the possibilities. They don’t show Warhol despite his mention, Lou Reed is a musically unintelligible copy, and I think it is pointed that Flynn’s Bowie only plays Bowie covers of Scott Walker’s covers of Jacques Brel. The layers of artifice obscure interminably, like turtles all the way down. Perhaps it was a clever subterfuge and metaphor, getting around licensing to speak to Bowie’s emulating search for himself, but in this music biopic, it simply turns the volume down.
I don’t hate Flynn’s performance. His interpretation has its merits and I don’t dislike his look, despite its differences from the icon. I want to love a Bowie on screen but I feel he never gets to flex his muscles and BE Bowie, which guts the entire Saviour Machine. Jena Malone feels believable and topical as his ever-debated Bowie first wife Angie. Maron is Maron, brash 70’s loudmouth that nurtures with negativity. I see why they needed some bombast to bring something to pair with the meek thin white ghost.
As it nears its finish, the subtlety dilutes as “points need to be made”. The “therapy” of his brother pretending to be another singer to express his insanity; a separation of psyches with the ability to make songs to express the madness inside for healing is a bit on the nose. Unfortunately, none of the film brings the eerie and otherworldly possibilities of its opening scene to bear: a 2001 inspired Space Oddity Moonage Daydream - Bowie is Tom who is Terry who is lost in space... How is this unique visually engaging psychedelically dynamic metaphor neutered and not followed upon, instead choosing to deliver bland shots of talking in cars?
I am fine with them skipping influential portions of his life and music. Even the massive undocumented turn from American nothing to rock royalty, puffed up or not, I might stomach. But you can’t make a film about his becoming the images he wanted to portray, but when it finally happens, you don’t talk about, show, or experience this synthesis. It has just happened off-screen and there is no fulfillment of the ethos; we don’t see inside Bowie and we don’t identify with the audience's inexplicable adoration. It is a given fact that people love the new Ziggy Stardust and because he had put on this persona it all worked out... that is just so odd and backwards.
I don’t think I truly had monumental issues until that last 20 min where it forgets to have a 3rd act. Yes, it had difficulties the entire time, but I tried to hold them down, still being invested due to my Bowie love. I wondered how the tale would weave to fashion the sparkly duds of a musician from Mars. But such a journey was a “NO GO” for launch and we are all left wanting on the rocket platform. You can take away his music, you can take away his charisma, but you at least have to give me his odyssey. There was nothing Hunked or Adored here (yeah, this bridging album doesn’t exist in the film), as we get the Movie that Sold The World of Bowie.
