hannah taylor

Having just lit the candle in my pocket-shrine following David Bowie’s producer spilling the beans about the new album, Nothing Has Changed, and tour, I figured what better way to celebrate than to host an exclusive (read: solitary) retrospective of Bowie’s forays into film.

If you missed out on having Bowie’s ethereal form in tights emblazoned on your retinas at a tender age (as the Goblin King in Jim Henson's musical fantasy Labyrinth), you are in for a treat my friend. While you may not necessarily associate his name with the medium, David Bowie translates extremely well into film. Somehow he manages to give credibility and even a sense of moment to the most absurd roles, with each character feeling like another one of his carefully formed stage personalities. Labyrinth, for example, should really be a bit of a zit on the face of cinema given the flat storyline, prevalence of mullets and, well, muppets. Yet David Bowie manages to give it depth (despite prancing around his lair in a billowing shirt). He is perfectly cast as the villainous baby snatcher whom one simultaneously fears and fancies; his characterisation creating a tension which prompts a deeper commentary on the conflict between adolescent sexual awakening and childhood roles within the family unit.

Another similarly ridiculous yet memorable performance (and one of my personal favourite ‘Bowie on screen’ moments) is his weird cameo in David Lynch’s nightmare of a Twin Peaks episode, Fire Walk With Me. In this film length episode, Bowie plays a long lost FBI agent complete with a white 1980s suit, tropical shirt and best of all, an odd Southern accent. Not one to do a small cameo with reservation and grace, Bowie lets loose a chilling scream before he mysteriously disappears for the rest of the film. Perhaps this is not his most important performance, but the quality of his southern drawl, if nothing else, makes it worth a mention.

In contrast, Bowie’s strongest film performance must be in Nicolas Roeg’s The Man Who Fell to Earth. Here he plays, appropriately, an alien who, crash-landing on Earth, finds himself in the dusty, quietly threatening, New Mexico desert. There he meets the lonely Mary-Lou who acts as his guide to a world where the only available activities seem to be getting drunk, having dazed sex and attending church – all the while surrounded by flickering television screens. Through Bowie’s eyes the mundane takes on an uneasy novelty as we are forced to confront our world through the eyes of an extra-terrestrial being, or indeed, as a cocaine and heroin addicted outsider (as Bowie was at the time).

Less famous, yet the film in which Bowie conveys the most piercing insight into the parallel world of drug addiction, is undoubtedly Wir Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo (We Children from Bahnhof Zoo) set in 1970s West Berlin. In this film Bowie plays himself, providing both a dazzling source of relief from the grim plot and a malevolent magnetism. In the climactic concert scene we see Bowie, incarnated as the Thin White Duke, emerge from a cloud of smoke as a radiant demagogue. While we watch him serenade the drugged up children of Berlin we become acutely aware of the fact that he represents their salvation and their downfall. When he sings, seemingly directly, to the gamine 13 year old protagonist, Christiane, we get a sense of the importance and intimacy of the relationship between many young people and their music. As Christiane searches for pills to pop, it seems that Bowie is singing to himself, embodied in his painfully young audience. His music offers sanctuary and understanding and yet in following him, it is suggested, one is led to very dark places.

Given the link made by the film between Bowie’s ‘scene’ and drug addiction, it is perhaps surprising that the singer was so keen to contribute a soundtrack and performance to Uli Edel’s work. However, we remember that Berlin was Bowie’s chosen stage in the 70s, when he was at the peak of his addiction, living in a decrepit West Berlin apartment with Iggy Pop; and it was Berlin where he struggled to end his addiction. Perhaps it is therefore understandable that he wanted to express the dark, absorbing, earthly, world of Wir Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo as a contrast to the ethereal glitter with which he is most commonly associated.

So whether you are a Bowie acolyte trying to find a way to fill your days before the anticipated album release, or someone who just likes watching niche films, give David Bowie, the actor from Mars, a try – he’ll take you to some far-out places.