DREAMS OF A LIFE REVIEW

Dreams of a Life is a documentary exploring the lie of Joyce Vincent.

Joyce Vincent was a 38 Year old woman. Back in 2006 she made the front page of the Sun Newspaper and many other newspapers and channels. When officials from the North London Housing association arrived at her bedsit flat in Wood Green to repossess due to rent not being paid. However, when they got into the bedsit a horrible discovery was made as the skeleton of Joyce was laying on the sofa, the television was still on in the corner on BBC1 and a pile of unopened Christmas presents laid on the floor. Joyce had been dead for nearly 3 years and no one had found her or even reported her missing. Her body was so badly decomposed that the only way to identify her was by comparing dental records to an old holiday photo of her smiling. 

Joyce had friends and family and still she wasn't discovered until 2006 and it was found she'd been sat there since 2003. Filmmaker Carol Morley saw the article to the right in the Sun newspaper. What amazed her was that there was hardly any information on Joyce, not even a photo of her! It was of the flat. Carol put out an ad in the newspaper asking for anyone who knew Joyce to get in contact. Through this documentary she explores her life. One of the upsetting things about her story and this documentary is that all the contributors are her friends. None are family.

Contributors interviews

The entire documentaries interviews are from friends of Joyce. No graphics are used to name them and I feel this is to keep the focus on the story of Joyce's life. However, a lot of these people know each other and knew Joyce at the same time so they refer to each other a lot during the run of the documentary. These people are past work colleagues, friends and one ex boyfriend (bald gentleman in the blue shirt). What I really like about how these interviews have been shot is that they're all one shot, they don't change during the interviews but Carol made sure each interview was either a different shot or style, one interview is a 2 shot, others are mid shots and a few are medium close ups so she's gotten the variation needed for the edit without needing to get a variation of shots in each interview. Not only this, the common rule of having the interviewee at one side of the frame isn't listened to in this documentary, all the interviews are centre frame which really stands out and brings you in more as it's slightly off putting to watch with all the other aspects of the film. What's also good as well is the background and lighting is consistent throughout the interviews. See screen shots below:



You see this horrible mucky background with a black vignette around it. This topped with, what looks like, a defused tungsten light on them to help match the background. This helps set the tone as the entire documentary is talking about this woman who died alone and then wasn't discovered for 3 years. It's a very upsetting and dark story so this background mixed with the information we get from all the contributors. This works really well as usually you'd need each interview to have a relevant location but what Carol did was focus on the fact that each of these people have a different story about Joyce but they're all connected by her as well so made the background all the same.

Visuals
As there obviously wouldn't be any footage of Joyce and the newspapers didn't even have a photo, Carol decided to recreate Joyce's life and also the scenes from when she was discovered, showing parts of the house covered in cobwebs and dust but NEVER a body. Below is the trailer which shows some examples of this footage:

They also casted actress Zawe Ashton to play Joyce in the recreations and staged parts of the film. Throughout this is helps to elmost bring Joyce back to life which for this film, works well to show she was once a real person. It also brings forward the horrible question... How did no one notice she had vanished for 3 years?
The recreations work along with the stories told by the interviews. What's very good about the casting of Zawe Ashton is she does look like Joyce which can be seen from the photos below:

The photo on the right is Joyce Vincent, on the left is a scene from Dreams of a Life. You can see the resemblance. The recreations not only show the memories and stories that the interviewee's tell us but also show Joyce in her house alone watching the TV. Giving the message she was lonely and focusing on the horrible fact that she died alone. We also see interviews cut from on screen to on the TV screen, showing Joyce watching all these stories but also looking upset and lonely.

This whole documentary really focuses on the fact that Joyce did have a lot of friends and a lot of people who knew her yet she just disappeared and no one ever noticed. This makes a lot of the viewers question, what would happen if you disappeared? 

Carol's work visually to bring the story of Joyce's life to the screen is very clever and experemental for the time of release (2011). It's a very creative way to tell a story and really helps to not only show Joyce and really focus on the fact this woman was once alive. But also get across the true horror of the story, that she lived a life of laughing, memories and had so much to be remembered for which we hear about in the interviews... Yet she was undiscovered for 3 years.
Recreation and/or experemental filming and sequences is something from this documentary I'd be very interested to use in my own if it works as it really makes this film stand out. Also the interviews used, centre locked off isn't common in documentaries but really makes these interviews stand out as it puts you off slightly by the uncommonness.