Dreamcatcher movie review (2015) | Little White Lies

Dream­catch­er

06 Mar 2015 / Released: 06 Mar 2015

Words by David Jenkins

Directed by Kim Longinotto

Starring Brenda Myers-Powell

Two individuals with curly, dark hair embrace in an outdoor setting with trees in the background.
Two individuals with curly, dark hair embrace in an outdoor setting with trees in the background.
4

Anticipation.

Not to be confused with Lawrence Kasdan’s 2003 hippy-horror trainwreck.

4

Enjoyment.

Deeply unsettling, yet the saintly qualities of Brenda Myers-Powell are not up for debate.

4

In Retrospect.

Documentaries are movies too, and Longinotto is one of the UK’s best filmmakers.

A sex-work­er turned fem­i­nist-force-of-nature is Kim Longinotto’s guide to Chica­go in her char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly great documentary.

The time will arrive when doc­u­men­tary film­mak­ing is con­sid­ered a legit­i­mate form of artis­tic endeav­our and not some two-bit fun­time annex which is easy because it doesn’t require any imag­i­na­tion. Then, the lol­ly-gag­ging cul­tur­al gate­keep­ers of the British film indus­try will dust the canapé scrap­ings from their flap­ping dick­ies and final­ly recog­nise the sub­lime achieve­ments of Kim Longinotto.

Here is a direc­tor who, for over 30 years, has remained dogged­ly focused on the top­ic of mod­ern fem­i­nism, its cul­tur­al vari­ants and the cal­lous strate­gies under­tak­en by (usu­al­ly) male oppres­sors to under­cut the sta­tus of women as equals. Her films don’t make mon­ey, they don’t pro­duce spin-offs, they don’t snag indus­try awards, but their val­ue tran­scends such sick­ly trifles.

To call Dream­catch­er one of her finest films would be a lie, as that would that it is supe­ri­or to great past works such as Divorce Iran­ian Style, Sis­ters in Law and Rough Aun­ties. It’s equal to those achieve­ments in terms of its nose for an issue or prob­lem rather than a con­trived sto­ry”, its expert abil­i­ty to sin­gle-out char­ac­ters” and the flu­id, com­pact nature of its structure.

The film doc­u­ments the grim tra­vails of one Bren­da Myers-Pow­ell as she scours the the Chica­go ghet­tos in her Dream­catch­er mobile, dis­pens­ing coun­sel, con­tra­cep­tion and a mod­icum of hope to the many pros­ti­tutes and abused women in the area. Once a sex work­er her­self, this, it turns out, is mere­ly one of a num­ber of pro-bono char­i­ta­ble activ­i­ties she under­takes, real­is­ing that her coal­face Samar­i­tan work is only a short-term solu­tion. We’re in the 21st cen­tu­ry. We’ve real­ly got to move ahead now.”

Along­side head­ing-up con­fes­sion­al meet­ings at a women’s prison, Bren­da hosts after-school work­shops in which she attempts to com­mu­ni­cate to local teenagers – often through humour and song — what abuse is and how it tends to ruin lives. The heart­break­ing core of Dream­catch­er exam­ines the notion that, in these poor com­mu­ni­ties that have seem­ing­ly been left as self-gov­ern­ing barter towns by local author­i­ties, this top-down neglect has led to sex­u­al vio­lence becom­ing nat­u­ralised. The preva­lence of abuse is only part of the prob­lem — it’s the fact that young peo­ple have been con­di­tioned into think­ing that a rit­u­al­is­tic beat­ing or forced sex­u­al encounter is a rite of passage.

Longinotto’s rare skill is in that she makes advo­ca­cy doc­u­men­taries by stealth, espous­ing the work of cer­tain peo­ple and groups with­out ever hav­ing to explic­it­ly state the fact. She trusts her images and her sub­jects to speak for them­selves, and she also trusts the view­er to see what is in front of them and deduce accord­ing­ly. While she remains a silent cham­pi­on of altru­is­tic women, her films are about the gru­elling strug­gles of peo­ple who rail against a soci­ety in which their rights have needs are not under consideration.

There are extreme­ly haunt­ing moments in this film, and the extent of human suf­fer­ing depict­ed is at times almost unfath­omable. Yet as with Longinotto’s sim­ple, brac­ing­ly forth­right film­mak­ing mode, the solu­tion comes from rolling up your sleeves, pound­ing the pave­ments and tak­ing names.

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