In the last years of his life, David Bowie ended nearly a decade of silence to engage in an extraordinary burst of activity, producing two groundbreaking albums and a musical. David Bowie: The Last Five Years explores this unexpected end to a remarkable career
HBO acquired the rights to air the BBC-produced David Bowie documentary The Last Five Years in the United States. In anticipation of its upcoming January 8 premiere (on what would’ve been the late icon’s 71st birthday) a new trailer for the film.
That fertile period is captured in HBO’s new documentary, David Bowie: The Last Five Years, which premieres Jan. 8, on what would have been the icon’s 71st birthday. During that stretch, Bowie released two albums, The Next Day and Blackstar, as well as oversaw his stage musical, Lazarus. HBO acquired the U.S. rights to the documentary from the BBC.
There was nothing predictable about David Bowie. Everything was designed to intrigue, to challenge, to defy all expectations. But perhaps no period in David Bowie’s extraordinary career raised more fascination, more surprise, and more questions than the last five years. This is an intimate portrait of one of the defining artists of the 20th and early 21st centuries, told by the people who knew him best – his friends and artistic collaborators.
This film takes a detailed look at Bowie’s last albums, The Next Day and Blackstar, and his play Lazarus. In his final five years, Bowie not only began producing music again, but returned to the core and defining themes of his career. This film explores how Bowie was a far more consistent artist than many interpretations of his career would have us believe. It traces the core themes from his final works and relates them to his incredible back catalogue. His urge to communicate feelings of spirituality, alienation and fame underpin his greatest works from the 1960s to 2016. This is what lies at the heart of his success and appeal – music that deals with what it means to be human in a way that goes far beyond the normal palette of a rock star.
