Patti Smith: Electric Poet
                   
Director: Sophie Peyrard, Anne Cutaia
Year: 2022
Rating: 4.5
Patti Smith has had a very interesting life - wrote some great poetry and made a few very good albums - but damn - do we really need such an adoring documentary about her. It feels like something that she would hate. Laugh at. Mock. A boring conventional documentary that just revels in her. Everything she did was brilliant, innovative, ground-breaking - her impact on music was profound - everything she uttered was from the Rock of Ages. No, it really wasn't. In clips of her talking back in the 1970s it is often drivel, psychological babbling. She seemed to have a bit of a Messiah complex and thought she was speaking for millions. The little girl from New Jersey was on a head trip. I would have thought being around her with her profundities delivered like stale pizza would have been super annoying.

 

At the same time, she made something of herself - wrote mounds of poetry, became part of the Warhol set, lived at the legendary Chelsea Hotel with Robert Mapplethorpe who would become a famous photographer, hung out with the beat poets of Ginsberg and Burroughs, had an affair with an unknown Sam Shepard and started appearing at poetry readings with an electric guitar. Then formed a whole band and started playing at CBGB regularly. Punk music had arrived and she was a central player in it. Her first album Horses, which I once had, is great - her next three follow-ups were excellent as well - Radio Ethiopia, Easter and Wave. And then she just said fuck it - this isn't who I want to be playing in huge stadiums - got married and quit music and became a mom. She came back later but in truth her music was no longer relevant. Too bad this documentary doesn't approach her with less of a worshipful attitude and given us more grit and much more music. Now in her 70's she seems much more interesting, thoughtful and centered and looks back with wisdom. More of her talking about her life would have been more interesting and hopefully less reverent.