'I want to break cinema': is Dick Johnson Is Dead the most radical film of 2020?
We’re living in boom times for non-fiction cinema, what may be one of the most creatively fertile periods in the history of the American documentary. Aside from the more obvious breakout hits, there’s a small but exciting movement of boundary-pushing films that endeavor to deconstruct and expand our understanding of the form, a set of innovative screen experiments that find elusive truths through contrived circumstances.
At the forefront of this miniature revolution is the great Kirsten Johnson and her latest film Dick Johnson Is Dead, streaming this weekend on Netflix. She won a special award for innovation in non-fiction storytelling at Sundance this past January for her unique approach to the premise of a premature commemoration of her father’s memory before he succumbs to Alzheimer’s. In an effort to get a leg up on her inevitable grief, she staged a series of scenarios simulating her kindly father’s death, from a sudden demise by falling air conditioner to a transcendent, confetti-strewn vision of heaven complete with chocolate fondue fountain. No less importantly, she turned the camera on herself and her authorship as she carried out this odd, inspired mission. Like her colleagues, she believes a viewer can learn
as much from the mechanism itself as the results it generates.
“I want to break cinema,” she tells the Guardian at the top of a discursive, illuminating phone call. “I want to push it until it gives me back something that’s impossible.”
That was her goal with her debut feature, 2016’s Cameraperson, a freeform collage of autobiography pieced together from repurposed footage shot in her career as a cinematographer. She eschewed the usual talking head interviews and the pretension of a bogus objectivity on her way to a more genuine style, in which the finished product accounts for and integrates her perspective as a constructor of images. It would be disingenuous to suggest that work over which a creator exerts a personal influence could come from an impartial nowhere, she reasoned, so best to get out in front of yourself. Such an assured, complete statement of artistic intent would leave a lesser film-maker wondering what’s left to cover, but Johnson only felt liberated.
“I made [Cameraperson] out of this desperate need to ask these questions to myself, and the whole thing was very unfamiliar to me as it emerged,” she says. “I made that out of need, didn’t know what it was going to be, and so I was afraid of failure. Now, I can take a bigger risk. I can go deeper. It can be more disastrous, and more unfamiliar. This entire project emerged with a sense of trust that, first off, I will fail. I tried to make this film in order to keep my father alive forever. Failure was inevitable. Maybe.”
Johnson’s spirit of curious, uncertain questioning – after five minutes of conversation, her wise and inquisitive tone gives her away as a college professor – guides Dick Johnson Is Dead through a fantastical afterlife. She built an investigative quality right into the fabric of her technique, which presents a multitude of situations informed by multiple schools of thought. Her father’s background in Christianity shapes the spectacular soundstage paradise reuniting him with his dearly departed wife, while a banality bordering on the nihilistic lingers as Dick’s unmoving body lies crumpled at the foot of a staircase. “When documentary film-makers experiment with fiction elements, we forget what we know,” she says. “We try to mimic the control we imagine fiction film-makers to have. But in fact, if we turn ourselves over to what we do and just search, not knowing, you enter a territory in which the unexpected and delightful can present themselves.”
She wanted to put her father out to sea on an iceberg, and for the first time in her career, she had the budget for it. But safety was the most vital yet restrictive parameter she had to consider, working with a subject of declining mental facility. Her ethic of total transparency meant weaving the careful considerations she had to take for her father’s wellbeing into the film itself, as if embedding a particularly revealing making-of featurette in the proper run time. “You question yourself at every moment,” she says. “Real questioning. It’s not an abstract ethical dilemma, if my father’s about to step into oncoming traffic because he can’t remember that I told him to stand on the corner. It is that literal – am I putting my father’s life at risk, moment to moment?”
Every time she called action, there was a non-zero chance something could happen to endanger the agreeable, up-for-anything Dick. She recalls one day’s shoot that placed her father behind the wheel of a car; she left the keys in the ignition for one take in order to operate the windshield wipers, and an unwitting Dick lurched the vehicle forward into the crew’s gear. She realized that constant, vigilant mindfulness would be the only acceptable option on set. “This is the question whenever you’re filming someone with less power than you,” she says. “It’s always the case that you have power over them, however, it’s also the case that they have more agency than you realize. Opening up the space in which my dad’s agency could exhibit itself, asking him questions in the middle of things, letting him call the shots, letting him say no, letting him decide which take would be the last.”
The film seriously engages with the unsavory question of exploitation, a third rail in the non-fiction world. In one haunting passage, she stages an ambulance ride and places herself in the back with her expiring dad. Even in this uncomfortably intimate space, she continues her chronicling, setting the camera down but letting it roll. For a viewer outside the family fold, it almost feels like we’re seeing something we shouldn’t. “There were so many times when I thought, ‘What will I do?’” she says. “I don’t know what I’d do if he tripped and fell, in the moment. Will I put the camera down? Will I keep filming? The ambulance scene is an interrogation of that, looking at what I’d do if placed in a scenario of real emergency like that. Would I shoot it? Of course I would.
“By owning that humanity, by not trying to hide where you might be impotent or wrong or profane, then you’re allowed much closer to reality,” she adds. With her total self-effacing candor on the topic, what would be a weakness if hidden becomes another facet of authentic imperfection through its exposure.
By the film’s end, however, the sterling-silver love between the two Johnsons assuages much of the moral concern this arrangement may raise. That’s the precious gem mined from the ore of cinema, an affection and care all the more affecting for its basis in a hard verisimilitude. “I work on this theory,” Johnson explains, “that even when a film is incredibly powerful emotionally, like Anthony Hopkins in The Father, we know that he doesn’t really have dementia. That’s a relief to us. We don’t have to face the same thing that we face when we watch Dick Johnson Is Dead. The audience walks out of the theater knowing that this dementia is eating my father alive. We value the thing that protects us from our own fear, and we wish to turn away from the thing that encourages us to face our fears.”
Johnson still has no choice but to face hers, having recently moved her indestructible father into a care facility. The film’s reflexive concept meant confronting herself at every turn, tackling anxiety and self-consciousness headon. In the sort of shot many documentarians try to obscure, she shows herself recording three different takes of a single voiceover line, measuring the emotion in her voice and tacitly taking stock of how much of it might be performative. The fullness of this disclosure makes the film stronger, and Johnson along with it. “I feel braver, since Cameraperson, and more brave still with this film,” she declares. “I want to make a mess with the next thing I make, pushing everyone and pulling them back.”
It is perhaps in this spirit that she concludes the interview by saying she looks forward to reading the eventual article. When I tell her I find it unsettling to write something in the knowledge that it will get back to the talent, she scuttles any worry by doing what she does, and shatters the illusion of the process. She says that the article will be something we’ve forged together, a revealing impression halfway between her self-perception and how she appears to everyone else. She says that no matter the take, an analysis from outside of her own brain will enrich her view of her own work. She says that what may challenge or even hurt her will be the most valuable part. “You cannot fail me,” she says. “You can’t.”
Dick Johnson Is Dead is available on Netflix on 2 October
verify who sent it, but she believes it was her ex.
Around the same time, Koa says she received texts from another unfamiliar number. The sender identified as Betty, which Koa knew to be the name of the woman her ex married sometime after they broke up. (The name has been changed to protect the subject’s identity.) One of the texts contained a callback number. When Koa tried the number, Betty answered, but denied sending her any text messages. The women are no longer in contact, but Koa says Betty told her that her marriage had also turned abusive, and she believed Koa’s ex was headed to Hawaii in May.
The pandemic then became more of an obstacle than a protection. Courthouses’ operations were limited, and advocates Koa had previously been speaking to had gone silent, probably overwhelmed responding to situations arising from the pandemic. All Koa could do was relocate again in midApril, to a place she describes as “very private” but temporary. She’s tired of running, but with the pandemic straining legal and advocacy resources, she feels trapped, unable to ever truly let her guard down.
•••
Reports of intimate partner violence have surged across the globe since March – but stories of escalating abuse tend to focus on people who live with their abusers, not those who have escaped. TK Logan, a behavioral scientist at the University of Kentucky who studies stalking, says abusers are probably still stalking their exes during the pandemic, even if this behavior hasn’t been formally studied yet.
“We’re hearing about increased calls about partner abuse,” Logan says, but metrics that track stalking are more nuanced, and therefore not as readily available – many studies on stalking require survey respondents to answer questions, rather than rely on reported numbers from agencies. Studies Logan has conducted in the past found that “about half of abusers stalked after a protective order”.
Over the years, Koa has taken out three protective orders against her ex, all in the east coast state where her parents lived, and where she and her ex lived at the time of his 2002 assault. (She feared filing orders in other states, where she had “no family or support system”, would give away her location.) Although the orders specified no contact with the victim, her ex was able to either call her from jail or have a friend contact her on his behalf.
After the last protective order in 2011, Koa says her ex “built a small army” of people to harass her online; for months, accounts she didn’t recognize posted comments questioning the credibility of her claims about her ex’s abuse and threatening physical violence.
According to Logan, “spreading rumors [that] can damage reputation” is a typical stalking behavior. So is creating financial problems for the victim (Koa’s ex has only paid a fraction of his court-mandated child support) and hacking their social media accounts. Though only 11% of stalking victims said they were stalked for five or more years, per US Bureau of Justice statistics, Logan says former intimate partners who were abusive tend to stalk their victims longer than stalkers who did not have intimate relationships with their victims.
Approximately one in six women in the US are stalked in a year, according to the Stalking Prevention, Awareness, and Resource Center (Sparc). Of those women, the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence says 66% are stalked by current or former intimate partners.
Meanwhile, pandemic conditions can exacerbate prior stalking behaviors, says Jennifer Landhuis, the director of
Sparc in Washington DC. Victims have less access to protective factors, such as jobs and services, and abusers may have more time to “gather information” on their ex-partners, Landhuis adds.
Landhuis says Sparc recommends victims seek out local service providers, like shelters, and “consider reporting the [stalking] behavior to law enforcement”.
But Koa has found that this advice hasn’t always applied to her. In April, after receiving the anonymous text message containing her home address, Koa says a local domestic violence shelter turned her away because she didn’t have hard proof that her ex was nearby. Instead, the shelter suggested Koa call the police if her ex showed up at her home. (An administrator for the shelter, responding to a request for comment, said they operate as an “emergency shelter” and couldn’t discuss particular cases.)
When Koa called the local police department to report that she believed her ex had contacted her, however, an officer notified Koa’s ex of the report – an act she feared would anger her ex, putting her in more danger. She called the police department back and spoke to a lieutenant, intending to explain why this was a potential problem. The lieutenant insisted on the merits of police calling her abuser to tell him to leave her alone. ( The Guardian has verified Koa’s account of this conversation with an audio recording of the call.)
“How will this guy stop if he never knows you’re making a complaint against him?” the lieutenant can be heard asking Koa on the call.
Koa said her goal was not to put law enforcement in touch with her ex. “I’m just trying to make a paper trail,” she said. “So that when he does get me, then people know who to look at.”
The lieutenant told Koa that it was “normal protocol” to contact the subject of police reports. When Koa asked to see the department’s policies that state this protocol, the lieutenant told her, “You’ll just have to take my word for it.”
Speaking to the Guardian for comment, a different lieutenant from Koa’s local police department said, “Depending on what type of case is reported, contact may be made with the suspect for follow-up.”
•••
Judge Elizabeth Hines, who presides over a domestic violence court in Ann Arbor, Michigan, notes that “instantly responding” to abusers who begin stalking their exes has been effective in stopping those behaviors. “No matter how small” the protective order violation is, Hines says it is crucial for offenders to hear from law enforcement, which sends the message that more serious violations can result in jail time.
This strategy, however, puts tremendous pressure on stalking survivors to report the harassment to law enforcement – whom they may not trust for various reasons. It also assumes victims can identify intimate partner violence stalking at its outset.
For years, Koa saw herself first as a survivor of assault, then a victim of the criminal justice system that failed to protect her; only after that did she consider herself a domestic violence survivor. “I had no idea that I was in a domestic violence relationship until 2009,” she says.
Today, it has been years since Koa has directly spoken with her ex. She says she “has no clue” as to whether he traveled to Hawaii in May or not – though she believes he’s still on the mainland. But knowing that the police have been in touch with him, she has prepared herself for another encounter – and the sense of safety she once felt has been slipping away.
Over the course of several conversations, Koa spoke about the ways in which the pandemic could make things harder for her next time there is word from her ex. She and her daughter are considering moving abroad – but leaving the US could be nearly impossible under current international travel restrictions.
Still, Koa hopes to change her circumstances. She says she is “moving forward” with a complaint against the guardian ad litem who requested the wellbeing check that resulted in Koa’s personal information being shared with her ex several years ago. She is also working on finding someone to help investigate her child support and custody case from 2008, which she says was “mishandled”.
“I’m not letting this define me,” says Koa.
For now, fighting for freedom from her abuser has become a part of her daily life. Between family courts failing to hold her ex accountable, law enforcement officers revealing her location to her ex and domestic violence services being unable to accommodate her, protecting herself has become almost a full-time job.
It’s a job Koa has gotten very good at. Legal documents, letters from shelters and audio recordings of phone calls create a detailed paper trail of her search for closure, and tell a story of loopholes and close calls that end with Koa relying almost entirely on her own survival instincts for safety. She’s been her own best means for survival so far.
If my will to live hadn’t outweighed his will to kill me, I would have been dead
Koa