David Bowie: The Last Five Years

Being born in 1960 I had the privilege of listening to David Bowie and watching his TV and movie performances for most of my life. This documentary really shows his ability and love of his craft right to the unfortunate end. I hope many people can take from this who suffer in any way what true strength and heart can do. I hope even though he's gone that the current and coming generations will appreciate his pure talent was and I believe this film shows just that. Bravo Tony Visconti, Carlos Alamar and others who knew him for your support and help through his career and your presence in this documentary. Having those only who actually knew him and not others who can only comment on his talent was a relief. Of all the documentaries I've watched through the years about someone famous this is the only one I give 10/10.

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 Bowie had health problems when he toured in 2004 and in the years after he seemed to have withdrawn from the public limelight.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.

first we don't have to do a documentary about bowie in his last five years his 70,s and 80,s years were excited they should do a documentary about that should be cool how he started his career the wild of drugs,alcohol of 70's the england movement of 60,s and 70,s could be interesting for me but this film is boring sorry sorry telling the truth.

This captures a great artist writing the final verses of his song.

He shows us who is was is who he is.

Proof of sick wisdom.

This is an interesting documentary about Bowie, however it is not what I had hoped for. Mostly it is interviews with people he worked with giving snippets of Bowie's personality, music and actions from way back. I don't understand where the "Last Five Years," comes into play. They show clips from as far back as they could find them. Also, it is rather disjointed with going from one phase of his career to the other, back and forth, back and forth, trying to perhaps contrast his styles, I suppose. If you are a huge Bowie fan, you will love it. If you liked his music simply for the music's sake, it will bore you.