STARDUST. About Bowie Without Bowie

“Stardust” is a portrait of a musician without his music, with an actor who doesn’t resemble the character he’s playing, even in darkness, in a film that turns a fascinating story of the rise to fame into a dull drama, and one of pop culture’s most colorful personalities into a mundane character.

The biographical film is almost as old as cinema itself – by the end of the 19th century, cinema pioneers like Georges Hatot, Georges Méliès, and Alfred Clark were making short films about episodes from the lives of Joan of Arc, Francis of Guise, and Mary Stuart. Over time, the biopic became a popular and respected genre: among the best films of all time, there are at least a few biographies, even if their content isn’t entirely truthful (“Lawrence of Arabia,” “Raging Bull,” or the largely fictional, though admittedly brilliant “Amadeus”). Films of this type generally generate significant profits and win numerous awards; many of them are classic examples of so-called Oscar bait – productions designed to win the film industry’s most famous statuette. Gabriel Range’s “Stardust” – about a slice of David Bowie‘s career – didn’t win any Oscars, but it’s a textbook example of a biopic so formulaic that it feels less like a botched “Saturday Night Live” sketch and more like a Wikipedia article adaptation, poorly edited and full of glaring factual errors.

London, 1971. David Bowie is a young musician with three albums and a dozen singles under his belt, but he still hasn’t broken into the top league. It seems the artist will be remembered for just one hit – the haunting ballad “Space Oddity” from two years earlier. Bowie’s latest album, “The Man Who Sold The World”, was a commercial failure, though it received good press in the United States. So, his ambitious manager, Tony Defries, organizes a promotional tour across the U.S. Bowie sets off to conquer America, where he is looked after by Ron Oberman – an employee of Mercury Records and the only person who believes in the potential of this British oddball, who parades around in a dress and sings gloomy songs about madness, war, and religion. Upon arrival, it turns out that Bowie hasn’t been granted a work visa, so he can’t perform public concerts. His stay in the U.S. becomes a failure, and the artist feels guilty for leaving behind his heavily pregnant wife Angie and his mentally ill half-brother Terry in England. All this leads Bowie to an idea that will change the course of his career.

The film’s opening frame informs the audience that most of the depicted events are fictional, though Bowie’s journey to America did indeed take place. Therefore, this can be considered a fictionalized version of a true story – a common practice in biographical films, which don’t always need to strictly adhere to facts. The problem with Range’s film doesn’t lie in its faithfulness to reality but in presenting it in a clichéd, stereotypical, and, worse yet, dreadfully dull and unconvincing way. Perhaps “Stardust”‘s biggest flaw is the lack of Bowie’s songs on the soundtrack, as the artist’s heirs refused to grant permission for their use. The soundtrack is instead filled with covers that Bowie performed during that period (such as Jacques Brel and The Yardbirds) and generic music imitating his original works. This decision disqualifies the entire production from the start: how is the viewer supposed to believe in the artist’s genius if they can’t engage with his art? The makers of “Velvet Goldmine” solved this problem by changing the main character’s identity to one inspired by Bowie and hiring professionals to compose songs in his style.

“Stardust” is hard to take seriously as a musical biography, as there are few musical sequences, and their quality borders on a pathetic joke. Bowie’s final concert as Ziggy Stardust – his breakthrough role – looks like a lifeless high school lip-sync show with an audience of two dozen people and Ron bouncing around like a clown. The film is much closer to a road movie with elements of (heavy) humor and (cheap) psychological exploration. The creators try to convince the audience that Bowie’s driving force was his brother’s schizophrenia, and that his fear of the madness running in his family led him to hide behind various stage personas. Bowie’s motivations were undoubtedly more complex, and he himself was a far more intricate person than how Range and co-writer Christopher Bell portray him. The exploitation of mental illness here is just one of many tired clichés – alongside marital problems, a road trip following the sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll formula, and the immortal theme of a misunderstood genius.

Another problem is the casting. Johnny Flynn – a singer and actor known from films like “Clouds of Sils Maria”, “Beast”, and “Emma” – doesn’t look, sound, or behave like David Bowie (at least not the one we know from interviews, concerts, and archives). His features are too bloated, his voice oddly nasal, sitting somewhere between Truman Capote and Noel Fielding. Flynn’s Bowie is neither charismatic nor interesting; he’s just a dull, irritating megalomaniac whose main goal seems to be fame rather than art. The only thing left to him is to make faces and wear horribly mismatched wigs that look like cheap Halloween costumes. To make matters worse, Bowie was only 24 years old at the time depicted, yet he is portrayed by a 36-year-old. And that’s not all: 28-year-old Defries is played by 65-year-old Julian Richings (the actor from the memorable prologue of “Cube”), while 27-year-old Oberman is portrayed by 56-year-old Marc Maron. All the actors suffer from poor makeup, resembling failed wax figures that escaped from Madame Tussauds.

“Stardust” comes across as a cynical attempt to capitalize on the undying popularity of the artist who passed away in 2016, and as a bid to cash in on the success of “Bohemian Rhapsody”, the biopic of Queen (who, by the way, recorded the excellent song “Under Pressure” with Bowie in the early ’80s). That film was far from perfect, but at least it had Queen’s music, well-executed and, at times, thrilling concert scenes, and a brilliant performance by Rami Malek. The Bowie film has none of these virtues, and its creators waste every opportunity to present an interesting story about the bumpy road to self-fulfillment. Fans of the artist and those familiar with his work will learn nothing new from “Stardust”, while those who weren’t convinced by Bowie before won’t change their opinion (not to mention that Bowie is practically absent from the film). It’s better to turn to the excellent BBC documentary trilogy: “Five Years” (2013), “The Last Five Years” (2017), and “Finding Fame” (2019), or to the feature films in which Bowie starred. “The Man Who Fell to Earth” (1976) and “The Hunger” (1983) are particularly recommended.