Musicians: Velvet Goldmine (Dir Todd Haynes 2h3m, 1998)
The biopic is not an easy beast to tame at the best of times, especially when considering a figure as elemental as David Bowie; perhaps this is why nobody has really tried, aside from the very bad Stardust (2020), the hagiography largely restricted to the sanctioned, all-access, and admittedly impressively panoramic Moonage Daydream documentary (2022). In the hands of Todd Haynes - also the director of the similarly kaledoscopic I'm Not There (2007) in which Bob Dylan is fractured and refracted into born again Christian, actor, rabble rouser, runaway and the aged Billy the Kid - Bowie's glam era is a jumping off point to depict the career of Brian Slade, an almalgam of several English glam rock frontmen ( Jonathan Rhys Meyers). We follow him, to his mysterious faked death and disappearance through fictionalised account of the period and his relationship with Jim Osterberg-a-like, Curt Wild (Ewan McGregor) that owes as much to Citizen Kane...
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