Patti Smith: Dream of Life

"I see the Chilean poet: I see the rainbow...” It’s impossible to determine where Steven Sebring’s biographical portrait ends and where Patti Smith begins. Dream Of Life, a collection of images, fragments and recollections from a remarkable musical career, often feels like an illustrated spoken word gig. Free associations bring us from hearing Bob Dylan for the first time to nursing a crush on William Burroughs in the early, heady days of CBGBs. “Oh, William,” she sighs. She later giggles uncontrollably playing ‘You Are My Sunshine’ with Sam Shepard. It’s a preposterously charming moment. Who knew the Godmother of Punk was so girlish?
Mr. Sebring, a noted fashion photographer, has collaborated with the rock icon on this drifting, impressionistic doc for some 12 years, enough time, evidently, to capture the sensation of Being Patti Smith. Here’s it’s all about the minutiae. The close personal moments – a visit with her parents at her childhood home in New Jersey, touching recollections of her recently departed friends (particularly husband Fred “Sonic” Smith, brother Todd, and BF Robert Mapplethorpe) – play second fiddle to routine. Idling backstage and mothering duties account for at least half of the film’s running time.
Fans and well-wishers will goof off this proximity to their idol, but for a casual viewer there will be no mistaking Mr. Sebring’s skittish photo album as a documentary proper. The free-falling internal logic may be entirely appropriate, nay, essential for his hyphenate subject, but the finished film often lacks order and drama.
Who cares? Dream Of Life has few merits as a handy cut-out-and-keep history in the manner of Ramones: End Of The Century, nor is it formally dazzling enough to punch in the same division as recent experimental music-docs like Wild Combination: A Portrait Of Arthur Russell. There are, however, legions of us who would happily part with good money to watch Patti Smith scrub floors for two hours.