An eccentric, unruly gem
NKirsten Johnson may joke that she is ‘‘going to hell’’ for making Dick Johnson is Dead, but she has at least made a hell of a film to earn her passage.
ew York-based documentary maker and cinematographer Kirsten Johnson has had a long and storied career shooting awardwinning films for herself and others all over the world.
Her partly autobiographical Cameraperson is amust see for anyone interested in the process of conceiving of and then creating a film.
Johnsonwas raised in a devoutly Seventh Day Adventist household, but by parents who managed to retain a lot of humour and mischievousness – even in the face of a sworn belief in a godwho could be less than forgiving of such sins as dancing, or evenwatching amovie.
Johnson’s dad, a retired psychiatrist, wears his faith very lightly. At the age of 84, with early signs of the dementiawhich took Johnson’s mother now beginning to affect his own day-to-day ability to look after himself, Johnson senior agreed to move from the family home in Seattle to live with Kirsten in Manhattan, and also to collaborate with her on a performed documentary on his last years on Earth.
Dick Johnson is Dead is the result, and it is a defiantly eccentric and unruly gem of a film to turn up in the usually fairly conservatively chosen Netflix stable.
Yes, there are many offbeat delights buried out the back of Netflix. But for a film as idiosyncratic as Dick Johnson is
Dead to announce itself to me on the home screen was a surprise. Or, maybe that algorithm is just getting to know me a little too well.
Johnson – the film-maker – asked her dad to enact his own death for camera, as well as speak as honestly as he could about his own life, his beloved wife and his thoughts on knowing that his own sense of self was evaporating day by day. As a former mental health professional, Johnson senior is unusually perceptive on his own journey, but the real engine of Dick Johnson is Dead is the enormous humour, humanity and grace that all involved bring to the project.
This film is amarvel. The idea of asking an 84-year-old man to play himself as a victim of deadly mishaps sounds macabre, but the
effect is to take us well outside of the usual bounds of a ‘‘documentary about dying’’ and into some surreal realm where the clammy tendrils of ‘‘good taste’’ are cast aside andwe can start to honestly talk – and laugh – about the one thing we will all face in the end.
Kirsten Johnson may joke that she is ‘‘going to hell’’ for making Dick Johnson is Dead, but she has at least made a hell of a film to earn her passage.
And, also on Netflix, Kiss the Ground is a refreshingly positive and practical guide to climate change and something we can actually do to combat it immediately.
The science of regenerative – not degenerative – farming is as old as agriculture itself. In fact, the modern one-crop-per-field method is only a few decades old.
Modern monoculture farming turns good earth to sterile dirt, losing water and carbon that should be stored in the soil to feed the next generation of pasture.
Kiss the Ground is an impassioned argument that ‘‘companion planting’’ of crops and pasture is better for the planet – and for the farm’s profit margins.
Voiced by Woody Harrelson, Kiss the Ground is a very worthwhile watch. If you make your living on the land, it might even be essential.