The 1990s were brutal for David Bowie. Critics savaged him with increasing venom. Promoters couldn't give tickets away. The man who'd defined reinvention for three decades had become, in the devastating words of one review, "a f****** disgrace". Even his attempt to dissolve his own myth with the band Tin Machine had arguably backfired. The chameleon of rock seemed to have run out of colours.
Ten years after his final iconic album, this feature documentary reveals how Bowie engineered one of music's most extraordinary resurrections. Beginning in those wilderness years when he'd lost much of his audience and his critical standing, the film traces his painstaking journey back to relevance - and ultimately to creating Blackstar, the masterpiece that would serve as his own epitaph.
Through intimate interviews with those who worked closest with him including Tony Visconti, Goldie and Hanif Kureishi, the film unpicks the strategic brilliance behind Bowie's final act. We learn how recording 1993's The Buddha of Suburbia soundtrack reconnected him with his creative roots and how his fascination with drum and bass showed an artist still hungry for the new.
The narrative peaks with his triumphant 2000 Glastonbury headline set, a performance that, despite pre-show vocal problems that forced him to cancel warm-up gigs, became the stuff of legend. Witnesses describe the massive crowd, the tears of relief, the sense of a king reclaiming his throne.
But it's the final chapter that transforms this from comeback story to something far more profound. After his 2004 on-stage heart attack forced a decade-long retreat, Bowie returned with 2013's instant classic, The Next Day. It’s follow-up Blackstar, was made during intensive chemotherapy. Producer Tony Visconti recounts the moment Bowie confirmed his cancer diagnosis, adding depth to the album’s themes of mortality. Bowie's goal was simple yet audacious: create the best album of his life while staring down death.
From the team behind Freddie Mercury: The Final Act, this is Bowie stripped of mythology - vulnerable, calculating, funny, and utterly uncompromising. An artist who didn't just face mortality but transformed it into art.