Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Dreaming Walls: Inside the Chelsea Hotel’ on Hulu, a Documentary About the Storied Past and Depressing Present of a NYC Landmark

Dreaming Walls: Inside the Chelsea Hotel (now on Hulu) contemplates the past, present and future of a New York City landmark, which was once the home for such luminary artists, many can be identified with a single word: Hendrix, Madonna, Joplin, Marilyn, Warhol, Dali. Key word being “contemplates,” since directors May Duverdier and Amelie van Elmbt forego many of the standard components of documentaries for fly-on-the-wall observations and impressionism. So the question here is, will the film draw in casual viewers, or do you need to carry some knowledge of and/or affection for the building with you in order to fully appreciate it?

DREAMING WALLS: INSIDE THE CHELSEA HOTEL: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: The film opens with candid archival footage of Patti Smith on the roof of the Chelsea, and if you think this documentary is going to show us old films of all the famous people who lived here, you’re way off base. Images of famous residents are projected on the walls to imply an ethereal presence, before we see brutally concrete images of the Chelsea as it is now: a long-gestating renovation project. Blueprints are taped on windows; walls are stripped to the studs; ladders and scaffolding and hard-helmeted men clutter the halls. The few residents left to endure the years-long construction can’t help but move slowly as they navigate the hazards – they’re mostly elderly, and the camera emulates their deliberate crawls through doors and down hallways.

Our “main character” here is Merle Lister, one of a handful of residents we meet, albeit without subtitles to tell us their names. Initially, she appears to be eccentric, perhaps in the throes of cognitive difficulties, as she lets go of her walker and moves her arms oddly, but gracefully through the air. But we soon learn that she was one of the Chelsea’s resident artists, a dancer and choreographer who once staged an evocative performance on one of the hotel’s famous staircases to celebrate the building’s 100th anniversary – a fact I had to Google, because if there’s one thing this documentary stubbornly avoids, it’s contextual information, which would better help us understand why it cuts between archival footage of said celebratory dance and a reenactment of it nearly 40 years later, with its original dancer and choreographer.

In a particularly compelling scene, Lister chats with a friendly construction worker about the “ghosts” in the building. He acknowledges having sensed them, then dances the mambo with her. It’s a rare interaction, as the residents often seem like ghosts themselves, going mostly unacknowledged by the helmeted men. If you accept this as a viable metaphor, then you’ll appreciate the irony as the painters, writers and sculptors who still live there try to work, meditate and play music as the din of grinding and drilling and sawing and thumping bleeds through the walls. This has been happening for years (Wikipedia: since 2011). Many residents were forced out, paid to leave. When the hotel re-opens, rent will be raised – astronomically, one presumes; this is Manhattan, after all – and then what will happen to these hunched and graying people? To the storied history within these walls? Will the ghosts be extinguished? Gentrification is kind to no one but the real estate holders, it seems.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Warhol’s Chelsea Girls; Sid and Nancy filmed there, since Nancy Spungen was murdered in the Chelsea; The Professional shot there; and former resident Ethan Hawke paid homage to the bohemian vibes by directing fiction film Chelsea Walls.

Performance Worth Watching: Lister is the perfect protagonist – for lack of a better word – for this film. She’s a narrative conduit for its two primary ideas: the Chelsea’s roots as a haven for artists, and the dispiriting pragmatism being forced upon them today.

Memorable Dialogue: Resident Steve Willis: “For a long time I felt like was witnessing a slow-motion rape of this building.”

Sex and Skin: Casual nudity in archival footage and images of artists drawing and sculpting with nude models.

Our Take: Dreaming Walls is zero exposition and all intuition, which gives the film a mesmerizing quality; Duverdier and van Elmbt clearly want us to feel the warm, lived-in, melancholy vibes of the Chelsea as it stands in the moment, on the brink of irreversible change. And in that sense, the film generally works, maintaining an ethereal, suggestive tone and formulating a sort of subconscious emotional argument against the tide of progress, against the notion that renovation trumps preservation. For once the walls are torn down or covered up, and the residents have moved on, who will remember what was here?

Yet for those of us with a fragile historical framework to hang this narrative on, the doc may be frustrating to watch. It comes into tangible focus in a sequence featuring resident Steve Willis, who says he “brought Mariah Carey” to the hotel (Google: he produced a music video shot there). His apartment, which once was home to Janis Joplin, shrunk to a studio in the renovation; he walks into a nearby torn-down area to show where his bedroom, kitchen and bathroom used to be, and holds the soap dish Joplin, he half-jokes, probably didn’t use.

The directors certainly evoke a feeling of loss and decay with Dreaming Walls, and chose a strong central figure in Lister, who provides a strong link between the Chelsea’s past and present. But their insistence upon taking what’s essentially the point-of-view of a ghost, dissolving between memories (via bits of archival footage) and present images of the Chelsea’s modern “upgrade,” is more vague than insightful. We aren’t mind-readers, you know.

Our Call: SKIP IT. Dreaming Walls has its share of poignant moments, but for a documentary about a building, it rarely seems rooted to the ground.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com.