Dreams of a Life

 3/4

Starring: Zawe Ashton

Not Rated (probable PG for Brief Language and Sexual Material)

If you died, right here and now, would anyone remember you?

We'd all like to think so.  We rest easy knowing that we can count on our family and friends to care about us, make sure we're doing alright, and be there when we need them.  The men and women who were friends, lovers and acquaintances of Joyce Carol Vincent believed they were all of those things to her.  So how is it that this woman, who was so bubbly and glamorous that she drew people to her without effort, ended up dying in a bedsit alone with no one noticing for two years?

I've been haunted by Joyce's story ever since I heard about it.  It's so bizarre that it is nearly beyond belief. Yet when I think about her, the emotion that I feel is a deep sadness.  How tragic it must be to not only die alone, but to be so invisible that no one notices until you're served with an eviction notice.

When she died, she was so anonymous that the newspapers had to ask for help in order to find out who she was.  Who was this woman who died the loneliest death one can imagine?  Her body was too decomposed for an autopsy, and could only be identified through dental records.  What kind of person could earn such a tragic fate?

In many ways, it's hard to imagine Joyce ending up with such an infamous death.  She was effortlessly beautiful, charismatic and the life of the party.  The fact that she dated a white man who was her complete opposite only made her more intriguing.  She drifted from office work to the club scene to the music world too; one person describes her as a chameleon who adapted the friends and interests of those she interacted with.  But she was mysterious too, rarely talking about her family, much less introducing them to her friends.  And when she came back into her friends lives, she was a shell of the woman she once was, and for reasons she wouldn't say.

Death is the ultimate finality.  When someone dies, they take their secrets to the grave.  So all the people who knew her can only speculate why she acted the way she did, what secrets this woman they knew was hiding.  All of them are shocked and devastated that this happened to a woman they knew and loved, and wonder, as everyone does, if there was something they could have done to help her.

"Dreams of a Life" is an unusual documentary in the sense that Joyce is "watching" her own documentary.  Played by Zawe Ashton, she goes about her final moments in her bedsit as she watches those who knew her reminisce on her and ask questions that can never be answered.  It may be manipulative, but there is no doubt that it heightens the emotional impact of the film.

Joyce Carol Vincent wasn't the president, she didn't save the world, and while she longed for bigger things, she was an ordinary woman.  That makes this film all the more fascinating.  This film sees her so specifically that, even nearly twenty years after her death, she comes alive.

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