Dreams of a Life (2011)

To me, this movie is perfection.

I'll tell you why so serious

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

If you are the type of person who is interested in peoples lives this is your film to watch, of course this way is not everyone is but don't let bad reviews put you off.My eyes never left the screen, I found it immensely interesting and quite sad. I feel it is really important for this film to have been made, simply for the fact that because of this film she did not disappear and even though she died alone she didn't live her life in vain. My feeling after watching the film was that in a sense we could all gain perspective - That is how vivid all of our lives are if only we can see it... Joyce may have never known how much people cared but the fact is they had, and what we must remember is there is always someone willing to help, there is always a chance. It seems she had many, for example seeing her old housemate randomly on the street - it could have been a chance to get help - This film is simply a quest to bring back some dignity and life for someone that could have just disappeared off the face of the earth. Now she is in so many peoples memories and I find that quite a noble quest.

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.

The film's UK release date coincided with Christmas 2011, which was deliberate as the subject of the film, Joyce Carol Vincent, died from causes unknown shortly before Christmas 2003. Her body was not discovered until January 2007 when bailiffs acting on behalf of a housing association arrived at her flat with a repossession order as her rent had not been paid for 3 years. Questions were asked by her local MP, Lynne Featherstone (who appears in the film), as to how it was possible that her death had been unnoticed by anyone during the three-year period. The unusual and poignant nature of Joyce's demise led the film maker, Carol Morley, to begin investigating who Joyce had been and how she had been so abandoned in death. The film is the result of her efforts to piece together Joyce Carol Vincent.Not long before her death we learn that Joyce was hospitalised for a peptic ulcer; she listed her next-of-kin at the hospital as her bank manager describing him as the person who knew her best. Yet the film features people from her life - ex-boyfriends, flat mates, friends, ex-colleagues - that she could have called upon. Although it is easy to believe that the circumstances of her death and body's subsequent discovery were the fault of a society whose care for its members has unravelled Al, one of Joyce's ex-boyfriends, states in the film that Joyce had some responsibility for her demise by pulling away and isolating herself from those who knew and cared about her. Beneath the sociological comment the film offers is a more profound study in Joyce's character and the tragedy that befell her. Indeed it seems as though a combination of traumas in her life had led Joyce, a great keeper of secrets, to isolate herself completely.The film is an amazing production as the director, Morley, combines documentary style interviews, which flow naturally from the subjects, combined with a fictional account of Joyce's life informed by the interviews but fictionalised at other points. What is even more remarkable is that Morley painstakingly unearthed all the interviewees, pictures, film footage, sound recordings etc as none were available to the authorities in the aftermath of Joyce's death. The film also features Morley's montage of Joyce's time line from birth to death and what she discovers of events along the way. Interestingly Joyce's family did not want to be involved with the making of the film, wishing to remain anonymous. Amongst the many things that Joyce Carol Vincent did in her life was to meet Nelson Mandela and the film ends with actual footage of Mandela addressing a small musical gathering at which Joyce was present and we see her on film. She was an unusual person, possessed of talents most of which were never realised. As one interviewee remarks (her ex-boyfriend Al) she never seemed to have a future and did not seem fully invested in life. The title is a play on both Joyce sleepwalking through life as well as the dream imagined for the viewer of Joyce's life.Joyce sings during the film a song the refrain of which is 'my smile is a frown upside down'. She really reminds me of the man in Stevie Smith's poem 'Not Waving But Drowning', who "was much further out than you thought and not waving but drowning ... I was much too far out all my life ..."