Many critics have slammed the “fictional” David Bowie biopic Stardust for different reasons, ranging from the lack of any true Bowie music to the fact that lead Johnny Flynn’s accent goes strangely in and out. I understand all that, but working within the confines of the chameleon world of Bowie, it does quite an admirable job of shuffling in and out of reality, the way we believe the fictional alien would have.
It’s a year or so before Bowie will release The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. He’s still in his enchanted folkie period, coming to America for the first time to promote the failing record The Man Who Sold the World, shocking homophobic people with his gender-bending ways while personally dealing with the institutionalization of his brother.
He meets Mercury publicist Rob Oberman (an outstanding Marc Maron), who is eager to work with him, but Bowie is such a bona drag — especially to music reporters — even Oberman grows weary of him. I wonder if, because the film depicts Bowie in a usually unsavory way, that’s one of the reasons that it was so disliked; I am a huge follower of Bowie, but even I recognize that he was something of a jerk much of the time, especially to the media.
Following the duo on a cross-country tour of America — one where he can’t even perform — Bowie manages to piss off everyone, from a local newspaper writer to a supposed bigwig at Rolling Stone. Perfectly capturing the enigmatic brilliance of the games Bowie put these people through, as the film goes on, you feel this is quite fitting for what the man’s public persona was — or at least who we perceived him to be.
What I’ve mostly read though was the sheer displeasure at the absence Bowie songs, instead relying on things like Anthony Newley tunes. Being unauthorized by the family — probably because they want to make their own movie, of course — the film works, while being somewhat off-putting, because besides the actual fans of his music, how many people truly know about Bowie before Ziggy, the defining music and the supposed alien? —Louis Fowler