Dick Johnson Is Dead Reviews

I wasn’t really sure what to expect from this flick but since I kept hearing some really good things about this movie, I thought I might as well check it out. Well, to be honest, even though I did like it, I have to admit that I was actually expecting more from the damned thing. I mean, Dick Johnson seemed to be a great guy and I’m glad for Kirsten Johnson that she seemed to have such a great relationship with both her parents but I’m afraid I was never really grabbed by her movie. I was also not sure about the final act. Indeed, as it turned out to be, in spite of its title and what you might expect, Dick Johnson actually never really died turning the shooting of this movie. And, yet, towards the end, they shot some fairly hardcore footage of someone apparently dying in an ambulance, apparently fake, and then a complete funeral ceremony with Dick Johnson’s family and relatives but, suddenly, it was revealed that it was in fact also a subterfuge. It’s not that I thought it was shocking, it’s more that it all felt rather misleading to me. I mean, Kirsten Johnson might argue that she made this movie to help her father to prepare for the end of his life but I think it was pretty obvious that he did it more as a favour to her then actually for himself.  In my opinion, in fact, this project was made partially out of a sense of guilt from Kirsten Johnson who mentioned that she didn’t have any footage of her mother when she was still Alzheimer free. As a compensation, she then decided to make a full-length feature focusing on her father before he became seriously demented. Still, there is no denying that the damned thing was really original, in fact, it was a unique picture, and only therefore, it gets some extra points from me. Anyway, to conclude, even if it didn’t really blow me away, it was still a decent watch and it is definitely worth a look, especially if you are into more experimental documentaries.