David Bowie: The Last Five Years

It doesn't disappoint. The documentary does give new insight into David Jones, the person. A small, and possibly final piece to the unfinished puzzle of an extraordinarily talented, charismatic, highly influential and complex artist. It's not a celebration of his life or the story of his career. They've been done elsewhere. It leaves the viewer sadly and keenly aware that s/he will never have had enough of David Bowie.

The more famous he became, the more ordinary David Bowie wanted to be. When he resided in Switzerland he was known as plain David Jones.

I heard since 2012 that Bowie's health was not so good. It had been some years since he was regularly seen in public.

So fans and critics were surprised when Bowie released The Next Day album in 2013.

In January 2016 the rock world was shocked when his death was announced just a few days after the release of the Blackstar album.

This documentary more than just looks at the last five years of his life. Bowie had health problems when he toured in 2004 and in the years after he seemed to have withdrawn from the public limelight.

We hear from collaborators on his final albums, some of them recreate the sounds from those albums. You can sense the surprise and joy they had been asked to record with Bowie. We also hear from directors who made the videos to accompany the songs from these final years and there was the collaboration he did for a stage musical. Some of them knew he was ill and that his time was short.

The most striking thing about this documentary was to hear from Bowie that his biggest regret was to lose some of his best years to drug addiction. A lot of performers whether they are actors or musicians claim that they regret taking drugs and I am never sure they are ever sincere. Bowie seemed to be here.

In ways this was a low key documentary but it was fascinating. Director Francis Whately seemingly did not have much to go on because Bowie was away from the limelight for so much of the last decade of his life.

But all in all it was a good little documentary. The first few minutes made me cry as well as the last few with Tony Viscounti. When he isolates David voice and you hear his breath...I lost it. I was born in the 70's so I didn't get to experience David in his early years so this was nice. He is and will remain my #1.

Conceptually, it works as intended: Bowie, from the perspective of those who worked with him and loved him. And there is more joy than sadness here. No fluff, no glorification, just a true to life account of a creative genius' last 5 years, true to himself until the very end. You will never get a full picture from Bowie. It's up to you to figure out the puzzle, and it's beautiful.

Last five years of the great star's life, but really a review of his career with studio versions of his songs played over obscure live footage.

Most interesting thing I took from it is the Major Tom element. At one point Bowie says it was his internal dialogue made manifest, then there's an image of a skeleton orbiting in space, then a skeleton discovered inside a spacesuit, then an adaptation of Heroes for Lazarus, then screw heads for eyes over a bandage in a death bed. You had to be there.

Overall: engaging, gets more interesting in the end.