By filming the renovation of the legendary Chelsea Hotel, this documentary tells the story of the disintegration of the arty utopias of the 20th century.
If walls have ears, those at the Chelsea Hotel have heard everything from the artistic elite of the last century. The list of those who have passed through the Manhattan establishment is dizzying: Bob Dylan, Patti Smith, the Sex Pistols, Madonna (she photographed her book there Sex), Leonard Cohen, Janis Joplin, David Hockney, Jack Kerouac, Jane Fonda and Jim Morrison have stayed there. Filmed and photographed many times, the legend of the debauched evenings that took place there has also been fueled by literature and music. Suffice to say that the mythical charge of the place weighs heavily.
The first good idea of this documentary co-produced by Martin Scorsese is to get rid of it by entering the hotel through the door of the anonymous people, who are in truth its last permanent residents, resisting the pressure to buy back their apartment. Because since the end of the 2000s, an interminable conversion into a luxury hotel has been unfolding in the corridors of the place that once made the glory of the underground. What this renovation says is the failure of the punk utopia. A clever mix of archives and views of apartments overflowing with memories, Dreaming Walls attempts to resurrect the ghosts of the counterculture that haunt advancing capitalism.
Dreaming Walls by Maya Duverdier and Joe Rohanne. In theaters August 28.