Beautiful Dreamers

This was a complete disappointment. The acting isn't bad, but the production was just so bad that at times I felt I needed to stop it, but I sadly made it through and was able to finish it a bit embarrassed by the whole poor movie. It is o.k. if you are o.k. with cheesy moral plots and don't mind watching a movie that vastly misconstrues Whitman. If you want a cheesy fictional story go for it.

Rip Torn does an excellent job bringing Walt Whitman to life in this fact-based story of his meeting with Dr. Bucke who ran a mental institution in London, Canada. Whitman the poet breaks the Victorian boundaries and causes Dr. Bucke to deal with the patients in an unconventional way.

The real-life Dr. Bucke was profoundly influenced by his encounter with Whitman. Dr. Bucke later wrote a book called COSMIC CONSCIOUSNESS in which he discussed the great mystics throughout history -- and he thought Whitman was one of the greatest. This film shows us why he was so impressed with the poet.

The positive stuff first: movie presented new information about poet Walt Whitman and his friendship with a Canadian doctor. His influence was tremendous and led to innovations of the treatment of the mentally ill. Rip Torn is really quite good as Whitman.

The negative:some of the acting is so over the top, especially those actors portraying the inmates at an asylum. The actress playing the daughter was a bit much too.

This is not a big budget Hollywood production and that shows. For example, there are two dinner scenes and both times all the people are eating is asparagus.

This is a movie which I think has been overlooked, by and large. Relatively few people saw it when it came out in the theatres due to the fact that it wasn't well publicized. I read a page-long interview with the director in an alternative, local paper and I distinctly remember the director saying that he felt Whitman's spirit helping him to direct this film, and that it had been a spiritual experience for him (the director). This motivated me to see the film and I saw it more than once before I purchased my own copy so I could see it again and again. I can tell that Whitman did indeed inspire the director because this film has so many poignant scenes like the ones with Whitman's mentally disabled brother, to whom Whitman says, 'you make me rich!' The beauty of this film comes, not from analyzing the accurateness of separate details (which other reviewers inform us are less than accurate), but in allowing the movie as a whole to touch your soul.

This little film had long been on my "keeper" list. Do people realize how stressed out, menopausal, emotionally abused women (as well as the mentally retarded) were REALLY treated by the medical profession at the turn of the century??!! All of the pious uptight Christian attitudes of that time were deadly to exploring TRUE emotional feelings that would allow us to embrace suffering souls, let alone explore what it means to embrace our humanity. Can you really imagine (by today's standards) that Walt Whitman's books were banned because he acknowledged women as having feelings and emotional responses as great as a mans? Think about that! The sensitivity of this movie still gets me and I give credit to the director for capturing this through his eyes.