Patti Smith: Dream of Life

Patti Smith is the embodiment of what a true artist is. Beautifully shot filled with poetry, ideas, music and life. I do have to say that it drags just a little bit on the second half and that Patti can also sound a tad pretentious, but what really shines is her humanity and her internal world of intricate emotion and rationality. I personally could listen to her read her poems for hours and just feel inspired. The film is also quite touching and heartfelt. She is still as relevant today as she was in the 70s. I saw her live two years ago when she came to Portugal e it was life changing. Such raw power and commitment to her art. This is also a very American documentary in the truest essence of what i feel America really is: the ancient power of the land that washes over brilliant artists and shines through them I am a true fan of Patti's so i'm not sure if the casual viewer would love it as much as me, but all of us who want to be artists should see. Also great passionate speech against Bush.

Thin, long-faced, androgynous, stringy-haired, dressed in skinny pants, coat, dangling tie, she is unmistakable, made famous by her own achievements as poet, painter, singer, musician, and activist and her close friend the late Robert Maplethorpe's iconic photo-portraits. Her music is and was a distinctive fusion of punk rock and spoken poetry. This film, created with an art installation and photography book, is the product of her 12-year collaboration with director Steven Sebring, and it is dominated by her own voice and vision, her sense of poetry, her wry warmth, elegance, and taste. She's a sweet, kind person, as we see her, who's suffered and been redeemed by significant personal loss. She particularly describes how the unexpected death of her younger brother has given her a larger, warmer heart, because it has been filled with him. The value of Smith's kinship with Blake and Rimbaud sinks in as she depicts herself in an ongoing cloud of quiet words. This is a public figure who emerges as a deeply authentic private person.

The film, mostly in evocative and beautiful but not arty black and white, cunningly but not logically edited, is meandering, equally strong in its depiction of personal talismanic objects and treasured people, but despite beginning with Smith's recitation of a series of personal milestones and dates, it's deliberately vague about denoting times and places--reminding one of the famous passage from Henry Green's 'Pack My Bag' that goes: "Prose is not to be read aloud but to oneself alone at night... it should be a long intimacy between strangers... it should slowly appeal to feelings unexpressed, it should in the end draw tears out of the stone." Smith and Sebring seem to know that to speak to us as poetry, her life need not be hung on a list of names and dates.

Dream of Life then is a film appealing to the open-minded and indulgent, unlikely to win over outsiders or skeptics. Despite its many beauties, it's rather a pity it can't serve as a more informative introduction to the woman and her work. Since she believes in reserve, but also in ruthless candor, Smith reveals that she has always had to get other people to tune her guitar. Sam Shepherd, whom she first met as a drummer, finds her playing ragged when they play a rather superfluous impromptu duet. She seems important as a poetic voice, not a musician or singer. This film, singing its own song, not cajoling, is full of the palimpsest pleasures of a layered life and likely to reward repeated viewings.

Patti Smith seems most convincing to this respectful non-devotee as a figure, an "icon," who was central to her times, friend of William Burroughs and Allan Ginzberg and Gregory Corso as well as Maplethorpe, a cult figure who has toured with Bob Dylan, a bereaved wife and mother who has taken long sabbaticals from her public career to immerse herself in living, a woman with dear siblings and sweet parents from a happy childhood. A woman whose son and daughter are hard to tell apart from her, who pays tender homage on screen to the tombs of Blake and Rimbeau with caressing hands on the marble and use of her ever-present Polaroid camera. From seemingly humble south Jersey origins, she grew up loving books and worshiping at the font of poets like Shelley and Whitman.

After her remarkable relationship with Maplethorpe she went to live in Michigan with her husband Fred "Sonic" Smith, then when he died returned to poetry and music and activism in New York in 1994. As Andrew O'Hehir points out in his Salon review, she "is perhaps the only major surviving link from the beat era to the '70s Manhattan art scene to the birth of punk to the present." She has evidently done this through her own special calm and integrity and keen instinct.

Now 61, living in the Chelsea Hotel, still vibrant and active and herself, she is most impressive in a passionate, deeply angry reading of the American Declaration of Independence, which merges into a ferocious indictment of George W. Bush, the most succinct yet complete and powerful one I have ever heard. A truly amazing and astonishingly winning lady. Her influences has been enormous, and her words are often wise. "In art and dream may you proceed with abandon. In life may you proceed with balance and stealth." Famously, from her first album, the opening words: "Jesus died for somebody's sins, but not mine. . .My sins my own/They belong to me...."

This was my first introduction to Patti Smith. I didn't know what to expect of the film. If you are expecting a movie with actors pretending to be someone they aren't, this isn't the movie for you. This is a wonderful documentary about a fascinating person. You won't just see Patti Smith/ Punk Rocker. You'll also see Patti Smith/Mother, Daughter, Activist, Friend, Artist and more. I enjoyed this Documentary very much. 11 years in the making. You can see Patti Smith's children grow before your eye's. This movie was definitely a labor of love. I look forward to the DVD release. Thank you Steven for taking the time to do this documentary right.

I had no expectations of this movie. About two minutes into it I got that feeling, you know the one, the feeling that wow, this is going to be a good one. So I settled back and let the film take me with it. It took me into Patti's world through a poetic portal in her self. She is the artist as a real person who touches, loves, nourishes and creates. Patti takes the viewer through her childhood, young adulthood, the Chelsea days, her days of mothering her children and tells of her losses and her rebirth into the world of touring once again. The cinematography combines with Patti's poetry to create scenes of dreams that you don't want to end. Because the film took 11 years to make, her children grow and mature into young talented adults so much like Patti was at their age. It is wonderful to see Sam Shepard playing guitar duets with Patti just off the cuff in her room sitting on a box on the floor after all the years that have come between them. There was still so much feeling between them like they were just kids again. I loved this movie. I loved the fact that it showed such a strong and tender woman who laughs so easily and is still so vital and relevant. The movie is about Patti Smith, so I don't see how people can criticize her for being the center of this universe. Her poetry may last forever.

Patti Smith has always been an astonishingly iconoclastic, performing and visual artist. She's always been the most influential woman, in the Punk rock world. She really helped kick-start this exciting new genre of music, when it was still just a fringe element of the rock scene, in the mid-70s.

Patti also single-handedly crafted a bold new image, of the female rock performer during the 70s. She startled the rock world with her unapologetic, devil-may-care androgynous style. Patti was the first woman in rock, to completely eschew glamor. Her clothes and shoes that she wears, have always been scruffy and disheveled. Her hair is scraggly, and she has a long, homely face. She is the complete personification, of what Punk rock is all about-brash, gritty, daring, and wickedly avant-guard.

This documentary highlights Patti's exceptional achievements as a visual artist, poet, and Punk rock icon. Her personal life is completely laid open for the viewer. Patti is shown at her childhood home in a humble working class neighborhood, visiting her parents. Patti's two children also appear in this film, and she shows how proud she is of her family. The viewer plainly realizes that instead of being a decadent rock star, Patti Smith is a warm, caring, and sharply intelligent human being.

This film has an arty visual style, which dovetails perfectly, with Patti Smith's status as a dedicated artist and performer. At times, the film drags on a bit. And there's a morose quality, underlying the film too. This factor is brought on mainly by Patti's intense focus, on the deaths of her spouse Fred, brother Todd, and friend Robert Mapplethorpe. It was obviously cathartic for Patti to discuss the sense of anguish that she feels, about the deaths of those she cared deeply about. That in itself is positive, but it dominated the film a bit too much.

For those who are not yet familiar with Patti Smith, seeing this film is a good way to acquaint yourself with her, and her legendary accomplishments as an artist/musician. Now in her early 60s, Patti Smith still reigns supreme, as the Godmother of Punk rock.