Patti Smith: Dream of Life
By: David Ball
December 5, 2008
Toronto, Canada
Patti Smith: Dream of Life, a 109-minute documentary by first-time director Steven Sebring, is an intimate and occasionally confounding examination of a punk rock legend. Sebring, a former fashion photographer, met Patti Smith at a magazine shoot in 1995 and spent the next 11 years filming the CBGB icon after her return from a self-imposed exile (she dropped out of the public eye at her peak in 1979 in order to raise a family in Detroit with her husband, ex-MC5 guitarist Fred "Sonic" Smith).
Although the reclusive poet is appropriately front-and-centre in almost every scene, Sebring avoids telling a straightforward biography. Instead, Dream of Life plays out like a series of non-linear cinéma vérité snapshots. Recent scenes of Patti reclining in her old Detroit house looking through family photos, playing her acoustic guitar and jamming with friend Sam Shepard are awkwardly juxtaposed with random concert clips, backstage shots with her band, journeys to Japan and the Middle East, an antiwar rally and visiting poets' graves - like Arthur Rimbaud's in France. The grainy black and white film does look beautiful though and Patti's own lyrical narration adds nice layers, but because Sebring ignores a timeline - and Patti and the band look pretty much the same through the 11 years of filming - watching the doc will frustrate all but the most hardcore fan.
And the frustrations continue.
Sebring never goes for the jugular. Instead of gleaning in-depth facts or complete performances of one of rock's most important women (there are only a few short clips of Patti in concert), we learn almost nothing about Patti's upbringing, her creative methods or musical influences. Why is Bob Dylan the only musical peer she mentions throughout the film? Also, the film doesn't divulge anything concerning Smith's groundbreaking album Horses or how she ultimately dealt with the deaths of friend Robert Mapplethorpe, band member Richard Sohl, her husband and Allen Ginsberg. One of the only times Smith verbally opens up about death is when she briefly mentions that death can be a positive thing, in regards to the loss of her late brother Todd.
But even with these problems, I still liked the film.
Sebring's unobtrusive camera does an effective job of exposing Smith with her guard down, stripping away her angry, emotionally charged persona. We see her affectionately doting over her kids, stroking her cat while it sits in the window and holding hands with her aging father during a family visit in New Jersey. Smith is pretty funny and likeable too, when she's not going off on one of her anti-Bush on-stage rants or spitting out the lyrics to "Rock N Roll Nigger" at a concert. The funniest scene has her trading off urination stories with Flea on a beach - Patti's peeing into a bottle in the cockpit of a plane wins hands down.
Patti Smith: Dream of Life is a case of style over substance and it'll leave the audience wanting more. But fans will still find it intriguing, as it offers some rare and fascinating glimpses into the personal life of their fiercely private hero
Video: Sundance '08 : Patti Smith: Dream of Life
