Dick Johnson is Dead (2020) sad yet uplifting doc about preparing for death (Review)

It’s impressive just how ‘up for it’ the titular Dick Johnson is for the various whims of his daughter, award-winning documentary maker Kirsten Johnson. Wide-eyed and smiling, 88-year-old Dick is placed into various fictitious mortal, and bloody situations throughout the movie staged in loving detail by his daughter, including getting in to and eventually falling asleep within a coffin in a church, surrounded by his laughing family and friends. His persistent chipper attitude is what makes ‘Dick Johnson is Dead’ such a positive experience, despite the darkness of what is presented.

Along with insights into Dick’s life and his family, we get a bit of background into filmmaking, as a look behind the scenes of Dick’s various deathly vignettes serves as a break from the main narrative. Daughter Kirsten creates imaginative scenarios with painstaking detail and a fully complimented filming crew, resulting in some fabulously dark deaths and a surprisingly glorious and uplifting view of the afterlife. Dick has dementia, the disease that took his late wife and this is discussed at length as he visits the Doctor as he is told about his behaviour during his spells of disorientation. He’s at an early stage of the disease, and one of the takeaways is how sad it will be when this positive individual eventually slips away from the world. This could explain why Kirsten is so keen to face her father’s death head-on and via multiple horror movie scenes – she wants to prepare herself as much as possible and allow her father to see how loved he is, perhaps to allay any fears he might have. Kirsten’s children feature within the film, interacting with Dick and their mother and there’s a strong sense that she’s doing her best to integrate Dick into their lives before he’s unable to be there. The whole film is about creating memories – false ones, real Ones, the overriding fact that it won’t matter once Dick has left us, is palpable.

Throughout, Dick’s approach to life is admirable. He doesn’t have a catchphrase as such, but he does say ‘how sweet it is’ multiple times when sitting or lying down, which is just adorable. This positivity is recreated by his daughter in a heaven montage which both delights and confuses Dick. Huge heads of deceased 1950’s celebrities are placed on actors who sit with a beaming Dick around a heavenly feast laden table while one with Bruce Lee’s face kicks in the background. Kirsten creates a scene where Dick’s toes, malformed from birth, are washed by Jesus and miraculously made whole. Dick and an actor wearing his deceased wife’s head dance together on a celestial dancefloor, he’s then replaced by an actor with a huge head bearing Dick’s younger face, and then they dance in a fantastic scene with some beautiful photography – it’s stunning to watch.

The film touches on religion, Dick is a somewhat lapsed Seventh Day Adventist, and there’s no question that heaven isn’t real to Dick and that it’s going to look like this. A darker scene takes place at Halloween, as the film explores Dick’s dementia via a staged spooky living room – Dick in fancy dress as a headless man looks through a door into an old people’s facility and chilled, he slams it shut. Kirsten tells us that was the hardest scene to film, perhaps as it mixes the imagined and the reality, Dick’s disease is only going to get worse and a facility like that may be where he is headed. The most moving scene occurs towards the end of the film, after a possibly real 911 emergency occurs and it looks like we may have lost Dick – his funeral brimming with mourners, telling stories, crying, his best friend struggling to deliver a heartfelt eulogy. Dick meanwhile hides with Kirsten out the back, giggling, readying himself to attend his funeral, which he does, triumphantly.

Walking down the aisle, he’s greeted by his friends, family, his religious congregation and he can’t help but shed a few tears at the spectacle. Only his best friend viewed briefly voicing loving disapproval of his coffin snooze at the start of the movie, cuts a lonely figure as Dick walks amongst his people. Having broken down during the eulogy, he stands sobbing at the side of the stage, juxtaposed with Dick’s beaming presence.

Kirsten Johnson loves her father very much, and this film charts the special relationship between the two. In tribute to her father, she manages to convey the essence of his life, his wide-eyed positivity, his love for those around him and their love for him. She also deals with the inevitability of his death by stating that ‘Dick Johnson is Dead’ to herself multiple times, so perhaps those words won’t be so shocking or upsetting when reality hits. Until then, though, and at the time of writing this, I believe Dick is very much still with us, I know she’ll make the most of her time with her father, and I appreciate the glimpse into their lives. Surprising and sad yet uplifting and funny – a bit like death itself, I hope I don’t hear that Dick Johnson is Dead for a good while yet.

DICK JOHNSON IS DEAD – DAVID’S ARCHIVE