Patti Smith: Dream of Life
Directed By Stephen Sebring
Director Stephen’s Sebring’s against-the-grain documentary Patti Smith: Dream of Life has been generally hailed as a triumphant achievement in the world of rock icon documentaries. Shot on and off over a period of 11 years with a single hand-held 16mm camera, Dream of Life pieces together a collage of objects, images, and sounds from Patti Smith’s world that, over the course of the film’s 109 minutes, lend some insight into the real life of this legendary artist. At the same time, it’s hard not to feel that the film’s ultra-stylized, super self-consciously hip look ultimately obscures more than reveals an “authentic” Patti Smith.
Patti Smith’s life narrative strangely does little to tie the film together, being recited chiefly at the beginning in a lifeless voiceover by Smith herself. In 1967, she left New Jersey for New York City to become a poet/artist. She soon hooked up with the photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, who took the photographs for her debut album “Horses,” an album that, fusing punk rock with original spoken poetry inspired by the Beats and French symbolists, quickly established her as a kind of cult figure in the underground music scene in 1975. A few years later, she met and married soul mate Fred “Sonic” Smith, with whom she moved to Detroit to start a family. Raising a son, Jackson, and a daughter, Jesse, Patti disappeared from public view for most of the 80’s. Then, in the 90’s, a series of tragedies changed the course of her life. The death of her husband in 1994 only shortly preceded the unexpected death of her brother Todd as well as that of her original keyboard player, Richard Sohl. Under the guidance of good friends Michael Stipe of R.E.M. and poet Allen Ginsberg, in 1995 she decided to resume her music career.
At about the same time, Patti met fashion photographer Steven Sebring. The two initially came together on a fashion shoot, and, enchanted with Patti’s unique, photogenic style, Sebring was moved to start filming her. With no initial goal or vision of where the film was ultimately headed or the final form it would take, Sebring followed her everywhere she went, from tours around her apartment to tours around the world: to concerts, political rallies, poetry readings, dead poets’ graves, her parents’ cow-themed house in the suburbs. Fair enough, except that in its relentless focus on the surface rather than the substance of these journeys and events (Patti discusses poetry while the camera once-overs her funky flowy skirt/combat boot combination; a antique artisanal Peruvian urn takes center stage in the meaning of Fred Smith’s death; hardly a thing happens without Patti whipping out her vintage Land 250 Polaroid to take her own po-mo picture within a picture of it) it inadvertently creates a portrait of a Patti Smith who ironically appears too absorbed with own image to engage in the process of making a documentary about herself. Having some familiarity with Patti Smith’s work (and having gotten to see her speak and perform with glowing charisma at the end of the Philadelphia Film Festival), I tend to believe that the portrait is a misleading one—that the ingrained fascinations of a fashion photographer have gotten in the way, here, of the insight we might otherwise gain into the inner life of the iconic Patti Smith.
Camryn Hansen