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Dick Johnson Is Dead
I put off publishing my top ten films list this year by a little over a month. I’ve had a very strict deadline in years past of publishing this list on the anniversary of starting my website (December 20th). But this year has been like no other, at least that I’ve lived through. So, as I ended my sixth year of writing film criticism, because I was tired, and because I wanted to squeeze a few more films in before I made the list, I held off.
I’m glad I did…
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.
