Dick Johnson Is Dead (2020)
dir. Kirsten Johnson
Rated: PG-13
image: ©2020 Netflix
I had my first colonoscopy this year at age forty. Most people don’t start getting this preventative care procedure until they turn fifty. I won’t bore you with the particulars of why I started early, but rest assured that everything is fine. Just before I was wheeled from the prep area back to the O.R., I had my first truly profound existential epiphany. The I.V. drip that the anesthesiologist hooked me up to started to take effect, and I began feeling a little drowsy. I had the comforting realization that death was like going to sleep. I thought about how I would be unconscious, knowing nothing, as the doctor performed this procedure, and how death, too, would be identical to unconsciousness; death is the act of never knowing anything again. In that moment, as the twilight of artificial sleep was coming on, I was fine with that realization.
Director Kirsten Johnson’s heartfelt, moving new documentary, Dick Johnson Is Dead, takes ninety minutes – culled from years of shooting for the picture – to make an uneasy, gallows humor sort of peace with the finality of death. It is a love letter from a daughter to a father, and vice versa. My only reservation with the film is how Johnson, right up until the final cut to black, prioritizes the main conceit of the film. She gleefully pulls the rug out from under us in the very last frame. I appreciated the playfulness of it, but not as much as was probably intended.
According to Johnson in the film, when she realized she was in the beginning stages of losing her octogenarian father, “I suggested we make a movie about him dying. He said, ‘yes.’” The two are perfect partners in crime. Dick was a clinical psychiatrist and the film begins with Kirsten convincing her father to retire and close up his decades-long therapy practice after the elder Johnson has a few concerning episodes of memory loss. He’s showing signs of dementia, and he agrees to move from his home in Seattle to Kirsten’s New York City apartment, so she can provide care for him.
The irreverent premise of the movie lets us in to Kirsten Johnson’s idiosyncratic nature and sense of humor. The filmmaker has spent decades shooting documentaries as a cinematographer, and her first film as director, Cameraperson, builds a documentary about her career out of thousands of hours of her footage.
In Dick Johnson Is Dead, the father and daughter wrestle with his declining health by fantasizing and shooting different – usually grisly – scenarios of his demise. Using stunt performers and clever editing, we see Dick get bashed in the head with a falling air conditioning unit, have his jugular pierced by construction pipe, and take a nasty fall down a flight of stairs.
That last one is a particularly poignant way for the two to envision Dick’s death. Kirsten opens up the world of the film and her own family history when she tells us about her mother’s final years. After suffering with Alzheimer’s Disease, her mother lost her balance coming down the stairs in her home. It may be cliché to talk about how you actually lose a loved one who has dementia twice, but Johnson makes the observation fresh and touching when talking about seeing her mother disappear long before her death, and the excruciating realization that the same thing is happening to her father.
The most heartbreaking moments of the documentary stand in stark contrast to the elaborate staging and shooting of the death scenes. In one of his mental fogs before retiring, Dick drove recklessly through a construction site without realizing he was doing it. The moment, just before Dick moves cross-country to live with his daughter, when the reality of losing his car sets in, the sense of loss brings the old man to tears. We also witness a health care worker administer a memory test to Dick, and our heart breaks for him as we watch the determination on his face when trying to come up with the answers to her questions.
So, seeing Kirsten collaborate with her father to stage violent pratfalls with the help of stunt people – and the consistent visceral sting of seeing the completed sequences, despite knowing exactly how each was accomplished – acts as a pressure valve to the emotional gut-punch of Dick’s decline.
There is also exultant joy in the “heaven” sequences of the film. Kirsten and her father stage these scenes, in which the elder Johnson imagines what eternal bliss will look like, as an exuberant celebration of life. They have an ineffable, dream-like quality to them. There is power and charm in the slow-motion images of dancers gracefully moving in sync while wearing oversized cutout pictures of Dick and his wife’s faces from their wedding day. It’s paradise by way of Baz Luhrmann and Busby Berkeley.
Dick is even willing to participate in the staging of his own funeral. We learn multitudes about the deeply devout Seventh-day Adventist when we see the priceless look on his face upon being told that “666 bucks” was the cost of the coffin he’ll be laying in for the mock funeral. Kirsten relates that it was her father taking her to a movie – Young Frankenstein – as a child, an activity forbidden by the church, that started her love affair with filmmaking.
Director Johnson uses the funeral sequence in the final minutes of her film to introduce a blurring of the line between fantasy and reality that flummoxed me more than anything. At several points during this section of the film, I was left wondering if I was watching an actual funeral or the staged version of it. I’m sure that ambiguity is exactly what Johnson wanted, but by the end of the film, it started to feel a little like legerdemain.
Dick Johnson Is Dead is a moving rumination on loss and death. Its quirky, playful sense of humor brings a light touch to our existential condition. We’re all moving inexorably toward the end of our consciousness; I myself hope to meet the challenge with as much grace and humility as Dick Johnson, and with as much curiosity, good humor, and openness as Kirsten Johnson.
Why it got 4 stars:
- The one point of contention I had with Dick Johnson is Dead fades into obscurity when compared to the moving, joyful celebration of life (and, in a way, death) that Kirsten Johnson and her father have crafted. Plus, Dick Johnson is an absolute hoot.
Things I forgot to mention in my review, because, well, I'm the Forgetful Film Critic:
- Dick falls asleep just about everywhere, in that way that only the very old can get away with. A high point of the movie is Kirsten using CGI to slowly raise Dick’s favorite chair, while he’s sleeping in it, up off the ground and right out of the frame. The moment is inspired.
- The playful, idiosyncratic nature of the movie is perfectly summed up by one transition: The words “about one year later” spelled out in a bowl of Alphabet soup.
- In my notes, I wrote the (not very insightful) phrase “it’s going to happen to all of us…” Not necessarily dementia, but certainly death. Several days after watching Dick Johnson Is Dead, I was thinking about what might happen if I end up with dementia or Alzheimer’s in my old age. I’ve been a runner for almost twenty years now, and I plan on being a runner for as long as I’m physically able. So, should I ever struggle with dementia in my final years, the probability of me waking up confused, thinking I’m late for a race or training run and hitting the road without being able to find my way back, is very high. Thinking about that stopped me in my tracks for a minute (and yes, it was while I was on a run).
Close encounters with people in movie theaters:
Dick Johnson Is Dead is available exclusively on Netflix, which is how I saw it.