'Moonage Daydream' review: Awe-struck fan's t David Bowie tribute

“Moonage Daydream,” Brett Morgen’s audio-visual ode to David Bowie, begins not with the sound of ringing guitars but a lengthy quote from the singer addressing the themes of Friedrich Nietzsche: the death of God, the vacuum of meaning, the need for a new idol to lead humanity.

A bit high-flown, perhaps, coming from a guy who once went around wearing stacked heels and calling himself Ziggy Stardust. Some of us, however, believe that Bowie long ago transcended the status of mere rock star — and Morgen is clearly part of the cult.

For the rest of you, “Moonage Daydream” (named after a classic Ziggy-era track) may fly slightly over your head. It isn't a straightforward chronicle of Bowie's life and work; for that, see Francis Whately’s several TV documentaries or read Dylan Jones’ excellent oral history. This is a fan’s scrapbook, curated from Bowie’s 50 years of eye-popping, ear-grabbing, norm-shattering creativity. "Moonage Daydream" is a Technicolor pastiche of sound, image, mood and feel — all the things that gave Bowie his near-mythical power.

It works because the source material remains so totally astounding. Bowie-as-Ziggy, for instance, still oozes a shocking Dionysian potency onstage. His pre-MTV music videos with director David Mallet (“Boys Keep Swinging,” “DJ”), are as strange and forward-looking as they were in 1979. And a muscular live rendition of 1995’s “Hallo Spaceboy” proves that Bowie’s later output wasn’t completely dismissible. There are also rare glimpses of his personal artwork — oil paintings and video-noodlings — about which he was uncharacteristically shy. (Some footage has been unseen until now; this is the first film supported by Bowie’s estate.)

"Moonage Daydream" works less well when Morgen, serving as his own editor, pours other visuals into the mix: news reels, animated segments, snippets of classic films, abstract blotches of color that resemble a Fillmore East light show. Morgen (“Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck”) may be trying to draw thematic connections here — the footage of NASA launches are self-explanatory, though a clip from the 1932 horror film "Freaks" feels random — or perhaps he's adopting Bowie’s own thieving-magpie approach to art. (“I'm a collector,” Bowie forthrightly tells an interviewer.) At any rate, the added imagery often feels free-associative and more distracting than illuminating.

Though dazzling and definitely IMAX-worthy, “Moonage Daydream” can be frustrating because it provides no context or chronology (you can glean the year only from Bowie’s hairstyle) and makes little attempt to show the inner workings of the Bowie spectacle. If “Moonage Daydream” seems awe-struck and slightly tongue-tied, maybe that’s fitting. Most Bowie fans probably can’t explain why they feel so deeply about him; they only know that they do.

By Rafer Guzmán

rafer.guzman@newsday.com@raferguzman