David Bowie’s story ended poignantly. On 8 January 2016, he released Blackstar, an album recorded with the knowledge that he would not live to make another. Two days later, on 10 January 2016, just as listeners and reviewers were starting to laud Blackstar as the tenderest ever expression of his craft, Bowie died.
Perhaps only Bowie could have turned his demise into a perfectly timed creative event and, in Jonathan Stiasny’s feature documentary The Final Act, Blackstar is presented as a definitive masterstroke, the closing chapter that makes sense of the rest of the book. To make that case, the film has to take some narrative-shaping liberties, because in reality Bowie’s career was, like most artistic arcs, full of false starts and long pauses. The Final Act dabbles in some parts of the Bowie timeline and elides others before focusing intently on moments that don’t deserve the attention. But in its effort to find a new angle on Bowie and make us love him afresh, it succeeds.
