With the greatest respect to everyone else I’ve been shuffling along this mortal coil with, the best moment in my life then, now and future-proofed is shaking David Bowie’s hand and telling him, “Thank you for changing my life.”

He looked at me with his one blue and one black eye, smiled and said, “It’s been an adventure, hasn’t it?”

Just how big a one is apparent from the film Brett Morgen of Kurt Cobain: Montage Of Heck renown has knitted together from thousands of hours of footage, much of which has been gathering dust somewhere for years.

Morgen signalled from the off that his take is an impressionistic one, so don’t expect, “Then he released Space Oddity, then he released The Man Who Sold The World, then he released Hunky Dory.”

Instead, Moonage Daydream hyperactively flits between decades in a way that’s more thematic than chronological, with Bowie supplying the narrative courtesy of archive interviews.

There are no talking heads, celebrity fans or captions to explain what you’re watching, the assumption being that if you’re a big enough fan to buy a ticket, you’ll know that the English chat show host he’s mercilessly ribbing circa Aladdin Sane is Russell Harty, and that the 1983 film in which he faces a Japanese World War II firing squad is Happy Christmas Mr. Lawrence.

Liberally armed with snippets of old sci-fi B-movies and images of Mr. B’s rarely seen paintings, Moren constructs everything including the kitchen-sink collages to accompany the likes of ‘Rock ‘N’ Roll Suicide’ and ‘Let’s Dance’, which sounds gargantuan coming out of the IMAX speakers.

Some of Moonage Daydream’s most thrilling scenes are the ones in which he shapeshifts from Ziggy into the Thin White Duke. On the one hand, he lost Mick Ronson who’s seen doing his guitar fellatio routine with his extra-terrestrial boss – oh to have been Ronno’s 1968 Gibson Les Paul! – and on the other he gained Luther Vandross, one of the seriously cool dudes who accompanied Bowie on his journey into the heart and soul of America.

Berlin-era fans will also lap up the Hansa Studios footage of him and Brian Eno “trying to form a new type of language” by the wall.

The biggest influences on his life turn out to be his elder half-brother Terry, who introduced him to Kerouac’s On The Road – Bowie was very much a beatnik traveller himself – and Imam, the one woman he allowed himself to truly love.

As yet another new persona is constructed on screen, I’m reminded of his former Musical Director Gerry Leonard telling me, “I got to know David Bowie quite well, but I never knew David Jones.”

He may have been in the public gaze for half a century, but the Brixton boy never lost any of his mystique – and probably added a few layers during his final The Next Day/Blackstar years.

There are a few insights into what made him tick – “I make people like what I like, not give them what they like” strikes me as being particularly revealing – but otherwise Moonage Daydream is a reminder of the Bowie enigma wrapped in a riddle rather than an attempt to unravel it.

No matter, Bowiephiles will love every action-packed second.

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