The documentary Dreaming Walls: Inside the Chelsea Hotel is set inside an institution with a remarkable cultural history. Residents of New York City’s Chelsea Hotel have included:
- writers Mark Twain, Arthur C. Clarke, Jack Kerouac and William C. Burroughs,
- playwrights Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams and Sam Shepherd,
- poets Dylan Thomas and Allen Ginzberg,
- painters Diego Rivera, Willem de Kooning and Jasper Johns,
- singer-songwriters Bob Dylan, Patti Smith and Tom Waits,
- musicians Edith Piaf, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, Cher, Iggy Pop and Madonna,
- film directors Milos Forman and Stanley Kubrick,
- actors Dennis Hopper, Elaine Stritch and Jane Fonda.
But that history is not what Dreaming Walls: Inside the Chelsea Hotel is about – at least not directly. And neither is the now bedraggled hotel’s transition into yet another upscale Manhattan retreat for the wealthy. Writer-directors Maya Duverdier and Amalie van Elmbt have focused on the current residents, who embody the last remnants of the Chelsea’s quirky, artistic flavor.
Those tenants are ten years into a nightmare of a renovation, essentially living in a construction zone in their hallways, outside their windows and, sometimes, inside their own apartments. Some of the tenants are very old and some are very, very, very old. There’s a clip of an interview with the painter Alphaeus Philemon Cole, who was the world’s oldest verified person when he died at the Chelsea at age 112.
And they are artsy. It’s the kind of place where one can turn the corner and be met with “Hey, we have a dance performance is underway”. Dreaming Walls: Inside the Chelsea Hotel is a cinéma vérité observation of these folks.
Dreaming Walls: Inside the Chelsea Hotel braids them into the hotel’s storied history by splicing in visual bits of the famed artists and art that are the Chelsea’s legacy. It’s impressionistic and ghostly, and the editing by Alain Dessauvage and Julie Naas elevates Dreaming Walls: Inside the Chelsea Hotel from the standard cinéma vérité doc.
How much you enjoy Dreaming Walls: Inside the Chelsea Hotel depends on how much you enjoy the company of artists and whether you find their eccentricities and self-absorption charming or annoying.
The film includes a passage of Dylan Thomas”: Do not go gentle into that good night. Indeed, the long artistic period of the Chelsea is going into the good night, but certainly not gently.
Dreaming Walls: Inside the Chelsea Hotel is streaming on Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube and redbox.