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Synopsis
This playful, profound, and immensely moving docu-fantasia by Kirsten Johnson is a valentine to the director’s beloved father, Dick Johnson, made as she has begun to face the reality of losing him to dementia. Using the language of cinema both to defy death and to confront it head-on, Johnson mischievously envisions an array of ways in which the man she loves most in the world might die, staging a series of alternately darkly comic and colorfully imaginative tableaux interwoven with raw vérité footage capturing the pair’s tender but increasingly fragile bond. Tackling taboo questions of aging, mortality, and grief with subversive humor and surprising grace,Dick Johnson Is Deadis ultimately a triumphant celebration of life, and of the gentle, funny, unforgettable man at its center. Long live Dick Johnson.
Picture 8/10
Kirsten Johnson’s Dick Johnson Is Dead receives a Blu-ray edition from The Criterion Collection, presented in its original aspect ratio 1.78:1 on a dual-layer disc. The film was completed through an entirely digital workflow and Criterion is sourcing the 1080p/24hz high-definition presentation from a 2K master, one that I assume came from Netflix.
It’s an odd film to say the least, a hybrid of documentary and fantasy featuring verité sequences mixed with elaborately staged moments, the merging of styles sounding to have been borne out of necessity. From what I was able to ascertain from writings around the film and the supplements on this disc, the film started out for Johnson as a darkly comedic and therapeutic project to deal with her father’s worsening dementia, the same disease she lost her mother to, and brought up in her previous film Cameraperson. The initial idea was Johnson would film her father meeting a variety of elaborate and farfetched deaths through stunt work, special effects, and quick editing, in a symbolic gesture to say goodbye to the man she knew. Though certainly morbid, it sounds as though her father has the exact same sense of humour as her because he was apparently more than game. Unfortunately, his dementia would worsen, and it became impossible to make the film as planned, the elaborate set pieces proving to be too intensive or too confusing for him. This led to the film changing direction, with Johnson taking these sequences (a lot of it coming from tests) and mixing them with the day-to-day material she was shooting with her father, turning the film into something that is both about the man she loves and fears losing, and their relationship.
This blending of styles, use of different equipment (from 4K to high-def to even iPhones), and so on leads to a film that can have a very different look and feel from one scene to another, and this bleeds through to the high-def presentation here. The documentary footage has what I guess you could call a very standard, high-definition digital documentary look, which can look a little rough at times and show some minor artifacts, also limited by available light and other conditions,but is generally clean and stable with nice looking colours. The staged scenes, from the finished “death” scenes to colourful, heavily stylized sequences that are supposed to take place in Heaven, have a polished, cleaner look with brighter, more vibrant colours paired with sharper details and fewer digital artifacts, if any. Even a darker scene that is supposed to take place in what I assume is Hell has a sharper look. Things then shift the other way again with one staged sequence that was filmed with an iPhone, so it has a less professional and fuzzier look while also being laced lots of artifacts and weaker colours.
Of course, all of this, even the iPhone sequence, are by design, so it really comes down to whether Criterion’s final presentation and encode handle things appropriately and I feel it does. There are some artifacts here and there, but they are more than likely baked into the digital photography, showing up in the Netflix stream as well. The fantasy sequences, which were more than likely filmed in 4K, look sharp and clean here, artifacts not being as noticeable, and the scenes do come off looking a little bit better in comparison to the Netflix version.
In all, it feels like a perfect representation of how the film should look.
Audio 8/10
The film has a wonderfully elaborate sound mix (as a feature on this disc goes over) and the 5.1 surround soundtrack, presented here in DTS-HD MA, does a commendable job. The documentary footage is about what you would expect, most sound focused to the fronts and limited by shooting conditions and equipment, though this never proves to be an issue, dialogue always audible. Ambient noise, like traffic or birds chirping, are mixed through the rears, but the film can also be playful with the documentary sequences, throwing some loud artificial effects to jolt you, like one sequence where a dump truck comes roaring past appearing to almost hit our protagonist, or another where it sounds like there is a car crash.
The fantasy and “death” scenes have the more artificial, clearly “created” soundtracks, and these sequences end up being surprisingly aggressive. The “Heaven” scenes have loud musical numbers that fill out the sound field, and range is far wider and more dynamic compared to the other portions of the film. They look like big budget spectaculars, and they have the sound mix to match.
It’s all rather fun and it all sounds great.
Extras 8/10
When it comes to supplements I confess I don’t hold out much hope for the titles that come from streaming services like Netflix and Amazon, but I have to say they’ve all been pleasant surprises, at least with the most recent batch, both One Night in Miami… and Time exceeding expectations when delving into their respective films and subjects. Dick Johnson Is Dead is another one to throw on there, the extras starting out with a very entertaining and illuminating audio commentary featuring director Kirsten Johnson, cowriter and editor Nels Bengerter, and documentary sound recordist Judy Karp. The track does get into technical details around scenes, provides backstories, explains decisions, contextualizes some aspects that might be lost on general audiences (like some references to Seventh-Day Adventism), and offers more particulars behind some of the scenes, like that sequence where her father meets an old friend who was also suffering from dementia. But I was probably most intrigued about the specifics behind the original ideas for the film, the three explaining where things began to change and how a new focus came to be, Johnson maybe not even being aware of the story she ended up having until later in the game, then finding a way to tell it through visuals and the footage she had. Johnson even touches on the worsening condition of her dad and how surprised she was at the speed of it, and she shares some more scary information around what happened during the Halloween night that was presented in the film. The three keep things going and move easily from one interesting subject to another making for a very entertaining, even funny commentary.
Criterion then throws in some video features. There’s a 20-minute piece edited together from several Zoom interviews Johnson did in 2020 for the release of the film, called In Conversation. She did interviews with Michael Moore, Josh Oppenheimer, Laura Poitras (with editor Bangerter sitting in as well with her), and Mike Mills. The footage is edited in such a way to group topics together, from the film’s subject matter to its film language.
The feature is nicely put together, the Zoom aspect limiting things a bit obviously, but I found the other two interview segments far more interesting. First is a 28-minute discussion between Johnson and producers Katy Chevigny and Marilyn Ness, and coproducer Maureen A. Ryan, Chevigny calling in remotely from the Netherlands, the other three sitting together in what might be Johnson’s apartment. I was expecting this to be a general discussion about the production, which it sort of is, but it really is from the perspective of the producers and what their respective jobs were. What I found most interesting was how the film’s blend of fantasy and reality called for producers with very different backgrounds doing completely different tasks from one another, one having to deal with the documentary aspects and getting everything needed for that, and another having to deal with the film like it was a studio production that was going to be using stunt doubles, sound effects, music, and more. They also discuss trying to get money and the difficulty that comes in getting funds when you have a film that is not at all easy to sell; admittedly, I had a "huh?" moment when I heard the synopsis. Disappointingly, while they mention that Netflix did come in once they had a proof of concept, they don’t really explain what attracted them to the project. At any rate, this is probably one of the better features around the roles of producers that I’ve seen.
The other new interview is one with sound designer Pete Horner, running 26-minutes. Sitting in front of his workstation at Skywalker Sound, the film’s soundtrack loaded up in an editing suite, he first talks about becoming involved with the project and finding the right tone for it. The film is clearly dark, but it has a comic tone, yet, as Horner explains, one must be careful not to overemphasize one over the other too much, otherwise it will destroy the balance. From that he then explains how he worked out the sound of the film, walking us through a handful of sequences (primarily the fictional ones) and how he and Johnson build the sounds, offering up alternate effects or how he layered them. On top of explaining “bad sound” around the iPhone scene, he also gives an example of where something can be too much when he shows us the “air conditioner death” with the addition of a slide-whistle, which was rightfully removed from the finished film. His straight interview portion was interesting enough but it’s this last two-thirds, where he actually walks us through, step-by-step, is when the feature really takes off.
The disc then closes with the film’s Netflix trailer. Criterion also includes an insert featuring a lengthy essay on the film by So Mayer, writing about Johnson’s eye as filmmaker, with references to Cameraperson, and the timeliness of this recent film.
Like Time, it’s not a packed special edition by any means, but the features that are here, packingtheir own emotional heft,do a superb job digging into the film’s production and subject matter, the two new insightful interviews focused on the technical qualities of the film being especially engaging. Nicely put together.
Closing
A wonderfully engaging special edition with a sharp looking presentation. A very easy recommendation for anyone wishing to own the film outside of its home streaming service.
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