Moonage Daydream. Brett Morgen

A Friday evening in Leiden. Emerging totally into David Bowie. The rockumentary lasts well over two hours and not a second went by unnoticed. Morgen made a movie for Bowie fans, as in true fans. No one else will sit through this movie. A few seemed to sleep through it or nodded off. Not me. Riveted is the right word.

Morgen made his movie by going through Bowie's private collection of films, clips and pictures and added a collage of influences on Bowie and loads of live shots from tours from the mid 70s until circa 2000. The music is fantastic, When you're a fan this is the holy grail. I've seen clips I've never seen before but then I'm not a You Tube forager scraping every crook and cranny of the World Wide Web, as in almost none at all. I'm happy with my records and 'Reality Tour' live dvd.

In the movie we hear Bowie speak. On himself, on his view on life, on his career. He's a singer, performer and an ever more successful one and lets face it, a very extravagant and provocative one at that. This results in a load of, I would almost call it, impertinent list of questions from tv people and journalists that dig into his personae, from David Jones to Bowie incarnation number x. As if being a singer allows people to dig into everything. Through time he deals with it better and better and finds himself along the way. Maturing it's called.

The second theme is Bowie the loner. He decided that in order to be his best, he had to sacrifice all else. And keep travelling, keep moving, never settle down. Until meeting Iman, there's almost nothing personal in the movie. Angie Bowie is presented in three or four photo's and a comment that he never really loved her. His son, Zowie, now Duncan Jones, does not even get a single mention, unless I missed a very superficial one.

There's nothing on his life after his heart attack on stage in 2004. Just a reference and a fleeting glimpse of the 'Lazarus' video.

What I did see and strongly realised that I missed David Bowie's most extravagant show, the Ziggy Stardust one. Too young. Also, I never realised the enormous dedication of fans. His impact on society. Again, too young. I did see him, for the first of five times, in 1976, but knew far too little songs at the time to truly appreciate what I was hearing. I had never even heard 'Ziggy Stardust' at the time, although I was told that he had not played a single song of the album. I only knew the hitsingles, of which he had had very few at the time in The Netherlands and 'John, I'm Only Dancing'. I bought the single in its original sleeve at a discount. In 1976 he had left the extravagance behind and had focused on the music itself and being 'The thin white duke. Little did I know about that.

The critique that Bowie had sold out came up as well. In a neat way it was described as "for the first time Bowie is fully in sink with his audience". The result: his first number 1 hit in The Netherlands, 'Let's Dance'. An album that was extremely anticipated after three years of silence. In the meantime Bowie had moved across the world and lived in many different places in Asia, detonating with peroxide blonde hair with everyone around him.

For me Bowie became terribly uninteresting after 'Let's Dance'. I even stopped buying his albums for a while. Some singles were fantastic, but albums? No. My personal change towards Bowie was confirmed in the movie to have been the correct choice. He himself admits he had lost interest more or less. It was 'Black Star' that swept me of my feet for the first time in decades. One of the better albums ever made. Also after the shock on that Monday morning in January 2016.

"Moving is good, it allows you to throw things away" or words like it Bowie spoke somewhere after his Berlin years. Well, anyone who's been to the museum a few years ago knows better. Even his drawings of the stage clothes of his first band, The Manish Boys, at age 17, were still in his collection. So, perhaps the plates and forks and knives went out but not much else.

I also saw many of his paintings for the first time. Yes, they were good. A new museum show around the globe could be in the making, I'd predict.

Moonage Daydream is a treat for every Bowie fan. It may be that we see what Brett Morgen wants us to see or the estate wants us to believe. Still, we see the ultimate dedication of a rock star to his profession and the tremendous heights he soared at, to never really come down. When Bowie played people showed up in their thousands right up to the end of his performing career and beyond with the stage show, 'Lazarus' and in the museum. Bowie's here to stay and his estate makes sure of that.

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