opening scene shows the Gropiusstadt, the most infamous estate in Berlin which can be seen as
a metaphor for decaying social conditions, depoliticized landscapes, crime and violence.
The first half of the film pays homage to Bowie. Christiane has all of his records and adores
him but symbolically sells them all to feed her habit later on in the film. Bowie is the face of
this depoliticized generation – the film successfully highlights how he would take
institutionalised political discourses and mould them into a futile, meaningless spectacle. He is
almost omnipresent throughout - His music plays in the clubs, his face looms over them on
posters and on record sleeves like the totalitarian dictators that he himself, obsessed over. One
of the most prominent scenes in the film is where Warszawa perhaps the darkest, most
haunting track on Low beings to play as Christiane tries heroin for the first time. It is as if
Bowie follows them through a journey of some sort, but the journey appears to lead nowhere –
which in essence is the perfect metaphor reflecting the sense of nihilism that lingers amongst
this generation.
The scene at Bowie’s concert personifies the ways in which everything that dictates the way that
Christiane lives is artificial. His persona becomes simultaneous with the addiction and with the
drug as they begin to spiral into a deep, dark pit of dependency, feeling as though they need
him to survive. This scene dresses up the addiction to a certain extent, with its use of the
romantic, almost religious presentation of Christiane coming face to face with such an idyllic
figure in her life. But in contrast, we are then faced with the naked truth of addiction as the film
begins to explore the exploitation of the children physically and mentally as they are prostituted
to feed their addiction - engulfed by the false sense of self as their bodies deteriorate.