Dreams of a Life (2011)

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

Your blood may run cold, but you now find yourself pinioned to the story.

Close shines in drama with strong language, adult themes.

Blistering performances.

Joyce Carol Vincent's life story is saddening, and intriguing. I applaud the director for bringing her story into everyone's attention and trying to string together her life and ambitions. But I felt the documentary was not very well made. Zawe Ashton as Joyce was spectacular and her acting was mesmerizing. That being said, the documentary needed to subtitle the names of the people who appeared and talked about Joyce. It was very annoying to figure out who was whom and how they knew Joyce. The most irritating thing was the board with horrible, almost unintelligible handwriting. The family declined to appear on the docu which was a big disappointment. All in all, I feel Carol tried her best but I felt more effort was needed.

DREAMS OF A LIFE is a feature length 2011 docu-drama by filmmaker Carol Morley that tells the true story of Joyce Carol Vincent, a woman who died in her flat in London around 2003 and wasn't found until more than three years later. The story itself is a great one, one of the most tragic tales you could imagine and a true reflection on the careless nature of modern society, but DREAMS OF A LIFE drops the ball along the way.Morley messes up by focusing way too much on recreating Vincent's brief life as a celebration instead of really getting to the heart of the manner of her death. After all, it's the unusual circumstances surrounding the death that makes this such a good story, but we learn next to nothing about it. Just how could somebody die in the heart of a heaving metropolis, with the TV on no less, and nobody realise for three years? Instead, there are endless bite-sized interviews with friends who knew here, and a good half an hour of excruciating singing as Morley explores Vincent's passion for music. All of this needed to be jettisoned and replaced with an investigative journalist doing a voice-over and exploring the mysteries that remain unsolved to date.

The story of an 'Eleanor Rigby' - but, a real one - right amongst us.Living in NYC, the story of Joyce Carol Vincent wasn't known here, but, this film - DREAMS OF A LIFE - make her, her story all too real.While watching, I (as I'm sure, many others) compared their lives to that of Joyce's.We all live isolated lives - some more-so than others.But, the story of Joyce Carol Vincent (who, pardon me - I feel I must say her full name - as a 'remembrance'), is so similar, yet, so different than what we most feel. Or, is it that we convince ourselves we're 'different?' The voices of this film - which the filmmakers had painstakingly researched as much as they could - is told through the words, remembrances of a few people who knew Joyce Carol Vincent.She kept her life - her relations with people - compatmentalised - a 'trait' (?) she got from her family (though Joyce Carol Vincent has 4 sisters, and - at the time of her passing - BOTH parents were alive - they did not take part in this film, nor was where Joyce's final resting place is told).Joyce had told her friends her mum had died when she was 11 years old.The truth was Joyce's mum WAS alive, and did not die until a year or so after Joye's death.The part of this film that really 'walloped' me, was the very ending - the very last shot.I'm not revealing anything by saying it's film of Joyce Carol Vincent; it's the WHERE the footage is from that really just blew me away.It would be great to say that seeing this will make 'us' take those in our lives closer to our hearts.But, I'm a realist.But, for Joyce Carol Vincent, this film serves as an eternal flame.

At its core this is a story about a very lonely person, one that we all may know, and how she fell through the cracks of life. One character sums it up perfectly: "It's strange really, it's like she never really existed but was just a figment of our imagination. She was a story. Someone that we all just made up; partly because we just let someone disappeared and die. Someone that we all thought we cared about." A few people have mentioned that this documentary is weak because Joyce, and her story, are mundane and not remarkable." They're absolutely correct, but I see this as a strength for the documentary. Joyce, and her "friends", are not remarkable in any way. Instead, they are normal people who lived their life around someone that was almost a ghost.It's remarkable to watch these people recite, and discover, how little they knew this woman that they considered a friend. And yet these friends, or interviewees, are the best window into Joyce's life. As the title of the film suggests it really is like Joyce only existed in a dream. Her past and future never existed and she was only a shell of a person. I was reminded strongly of the movie Inception while thinking about Joyce. Not to ruin Inception for anyone, but there's a conversation where one character says to another "I can't imagine you with all your complexity, all your perfection and imperfection. You're just a shade..." That's what Joyce was, only a shade of a real person.If there's a lesson to take from this movie it's that we need to do a better job of keeping in contact with our friends. I don't know what happened in Joyce's life that left her to die alone, but no one should have that fate.