01.27.08
At Sundance: Patti Smith: Dream of Life
On a whim, I found myself at the Sundance Film Festival last weekend. It’s a weird scene, like everyone that you bump into on Beverly Drive between 1 & 2 PM just decided to buy a puffy jacket and a scarf and head off to Utah. Like everyone’s all makeup’d with straightened hair and sunglasses in case they find themselves in the background of some WireImage photo or something. It’s kind of awesome and was really entertaining to me. Anyway, on to the movie.
The one screening that I got to go to was the world premiere of a documentary about rock legend Patti Smith called Patti Smith: Dream of Life. It’s been well documented that I am a fan of music documentaries (yes, Rockumentaries) and I think that’s what made me like this one, more than the quality of it. It’s a meandering dream of the last 12 years of Smith’s life since her husband died. It seems that the filmmaker (colossally douchey photographer) Steven Sebring (careful, that site takes control of your browser size…classy…) basically just followed her around for about 12 years and they became BFF and he filmed her and put together this movie. It’s definitely a valentine to Smith, who is a totally cool and talented and rocking chick. But as a film, there’s not much of a story which made it wear on me pretty quickly. As a result of budgetary and equipment restraints, there are a lot of different looks to the film - black and white, grainy, saturated, etc. which was kind of interesting but didn’t have any real rhyme or reason to it. Smith herself is captivating, but as someone who wasn’t a fan before this movie, I couldn’t help but think: “Ok, great, but, so…?” I don’t think this will win the Audience Award, but it’s kind of interesting to have what amounts to a backstage pass to such an influential figure’s life.
Smith obviously loves her children and did love her husband, but I wish I had known more about who he was and what their relationship was like. Smith provides a haunting voiceover throughout and frames the film with some candid interviews in her bedroom. This minimal structure definitely helped, but I wanted more - more story, structure, more past. I still liked it, though.
The Q&A afterwards was great, too. Patti Smith was inches away from me and really funny. One exchange with an audience member (seriously, don’t let people ask questions because people are idiots) went like this:
IDIOT: As someone who has basically shaped their life and choices around your music…
PATTI: You know, there are doctors for that
IDIOT: Huh?
Haha - zing!