Released two days before his death, Bowie\u2019s last album Blackstar was a redemptive masterstroke. But his career was stuffed with failures \u2013 and this documentary refuses to gloss over the most painful partsDavid Bowie\u2019s 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\u2019s 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\u2019s 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\u2019t deserve the attention. But in its effort to find a new angle on Bowie and make us love him afresh, it succeeds. Continue reading…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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