DVD REVIEW: THE MAN WHO STOLE THE WORLD: DAVID BOWIE

Shane | 20 July 2016 | Reply

DVD REVIEW: THE MAN WHO STOLE THE WORLD: DAVID BOWIE
Shock Entertainment
6 July, 2016
Reviewed by Shane Pinnegar
8/10

David Bowie’s life and career could spawn any number of documentaries. Movies and mini-series’, such was the diversity, energy, art and electricity he brought to his music.

As an artist he irrevocably combined the music he made with its performance: each of his fascinating alter-egos took on a life of their own, making Ziggy Stardust, Aladdin Sane, The Thin White Duke and more as real as alternate personas can be. So committed to his art was he, that he lived each life so completely and got tied up in the dysfunction, the drugs, the pressures of each.

With such a storied life, there’s no way that a fifty-seven-minute doco can do it justice, but filmmakers Elena Carmen and Billy Simpson provide as astute and detailed an overview as possible in the time they have, relying on voice over narrative and a succession of very relevant talking heads, including various producers, photographers, journalists and collaborators.

Not every high concept project that Bowie attempted was a success, but as The Man Who Stole The World underlines emphatically, it was his fearless approach to music as art, and the compulsion within him to create, that mattered.

In the wake of Bowie’s untimely death, it’s obvious we’ll probably never see his like again: a ground-breaking musician, conceptual artist and harbinger of social change who is beyond compare.