MOONAGE DAYDREAM, I’VE BEEN WAITING FOR YOU ALL MY LIFE!

Tempo di lettura: 3 minuti

I’m an alligator, I’m a mama-papa coming for you
I’m the space invader, I’ll be a rock ‘n’ rollin’ bitch for you
Keep your mouth shut,
you’re squawking like a pink monkey bird
And I’m busting up my brains for the words

On September 26, 2022, the right wing takes over the government in Italy. And when bad things happen, we all need to be close to someone who can give us new motivation to continue life’s journey. As I have already written, I get my motivation from my old imaginary friend, David Bowie.
And he comes right in on this bad day, with his reflections on life, death, fascism, change. So I went to see Moonage Daydream, to spend a couple of hours just in his company.
Brett Morgen‘s film was shown at the Cannes Film Festival out of competition. It is David Bowie’s testimonial diary, told in his own voice and built through his personal archive to which only Brett Morgen had access.
In 2007 Morgen had met with David to discuss this project. David had been enthusiastic, but he was in a period of semi-rest from the scene for health reasons, so they decided to postpone it until better times.
In 2016, after David’s death, Morgen contacted his curator, to tell him that he would like to pursue this project, in the form of an immersive IMAX experience designed as a kind of collage, without interviews, driven solely by David’s voice. The curator told him that David had, for at least 30 years, cared for his personal archive in which he kept everything about himself. He would never accept a classic documentary about his life. Morgen showed his earlier work-such as Crossfire Hurricane and On the Ropes-and because of that he got approval, on one very specific condition: David was not there to approve, so this would not be a film about “David Bowie on David Bowie” but about “Brett Morgen on David Bowie.”
Morgen had unlimited access to the archive: he spent two years just viewing it. At that time he was 47 years old with three children, working at least 18 hours a day nonstop. He had a heart attack. Right during the time he was working on the script. He paused, and thought about his children, to whom he was transmitting that in life it only matters to work, work, work. Moonage Daydream was his chance to give them another view of life, David’s view: live your life every day fully, no matter what you do or who you are. It doesn’t matter how much time you have, but what you do.
The result of Brett Morgen’s extraordinary work is a unique and inimitable journey into our existence, into chaos, into the ever-changing world, into death, into the freedom to choose each day what clothes to wear and what journey to take. In the possibility of making choices and retracing our steps, of changing our thinking, of being able to choose, between two options, both.
At the age of 16, you can choose to live the greatest adventure of life, and really live it. Thank you David.