“Dick Johnson is Dead” is not the typical documentary. In fact, one could argue that it’s more of a therapeutic exercise than a film. Though, with director Kirsten Johnson (best known for her doc “Cameraperson“) behind the camera, no matter its intention, you know you’re in good hands.
As seen in the trailer for “Dick Johnson is Dead,” Kirsten Johnson’s new documentary follows the story of losing her father. The caveat is that Dick Johnson isn’t actually dead. Yet, at least. He’s in his mid-80s and beginning to show the signs of aging, as his memory becomes less reliable. He’s approaching the end of life and his daughter doesn’t know how to deal with this. So, what does Kirsten Johnson do to help work through her issues? Make a narrative film and kill her dad off in it multiple times. Oh, and then record it all and make a documentary about that.
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We were lucky enough to catch the doc when it screened at this year’s Sundance. And in our review, we said, “Within it, though, nestles a deeply moving, lovelorn tribute to a lovely man, with his unflagging cheerfulness, his devotion to his daughter and his late wife (which is not so devout it stops him having a joyously frisky encounter with an old flame late on). Yet the unusual frankness, from both subject and director, about the usually taboo subject of death —not as an abstract, general concept but a hard, fast-approaching fact— also gives it an edge of ferocity.”
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“Dick Johnson is Dead” is set to debut on Netflix on October 2.You can watch the full trailer below. (Warning, if you’re a sentimental, emotional person, the trailer might hit ya in the feels.)
Here’s the synopsis:
A lifetime of making documentaries has convinced award-winning filmmaker Kirsten Johnson of the power of the real. But now she’s ready to use every escapist movie-making trick in the book – staging inventive and fantastical ways for her 86-year-old psychiatrist father to die while hoping that cinema might help her bend time, laugh at pain and keep her father alive forever. The darkly funny and wildly imaginative DICK JOHNSON IS DEAD is a love letter from a daughter to a father, creatively blending fact and fiction to create a celebratory exploration of how movies give us the tools to grapple with life’s profundity.
