(:)(:)(:) Three snouts up for Dick Johnson is Dead streaming on Netflix. I heard the movie reviewed on NPR. Then a couple of other people recommended it. Then we looked at Rotten Tomatoes where it got like 100% from the critics (unheard of). And then we watched it.
I found it to be a watchable and endearing film. It’s sweet to see the filmmaker/daughter interacting lovingly with her declining father, helping him stage different deaths for himself over and over again. I think I could be that consistently loving with my own declining mother as long as I was constantly on camera. Sorry for the snark, but yeah, it’s easier said than done off camera. I’m not removing 2 snouts from cynicism though, just it wasn’t that interesting of a movie to me despite the fact that I’m also constantly involved with my mom’s final years.
What do we call this genre, by the way? Some call it a documentary, but it’s really not that because so much of what is happening is deliberately and openly staged. If it were a book, we’d call it creative nonfiction. Here’s a piece exploring that question and the lines that filmmaker Kirsten Johnson crosses, Kirsten Johnson Defies the Documentary with ‘Dick Johnson Is Dead’.
My sense is that what critics like about the film most is this genre exploding element–and that’s what I like too, it’s tremendously inviting to other filmmakers to blur the lines between fiction and documentary, sort of magic realism on film.
Yet, despite the topic (which is close to my heart) and the truly engaging way of the filmmaker and the fun of watching an 87 year old man with a touch of dementia die like Wiley Coyote over and over, I actually found the experience of watching it to be just meh.
Having said all that, I probably should be willing to do a deeper inquiry into the part of me that does not behave as lovingly towards my mom in real life as Kirsten Johnson does towards her father Dick on screen. I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that it is threatening to me to watch Kirsten move her father into her small apartment with her and incorporate him into her life. This isn’t something I’m able or willing to do with my mother. It’s challenging enough having moved her from southern to northern California to live nearer to all three of her children last year. Well, that’s all I feel able to say right now. More shall be revealed…