Dick Johnson Is Dead

Name: Dick Johnson Is Dead
Genre: Drama, Documentary
Released: October 2, 2020
Duration: 89 min
Rating: 89
Cast: Ana Hoffman, Dick Johnson, Kirsten Johnson, Vasthy Mompoint

2020

METASCORE

Universal acclaim based on 28 Critic Reviews

See All

USER SCORE

Generally favorable reviews based on 44 Ratings

See All

7.6

VOTE NOW

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

7.6	Your Score
7.6	User Score Generally favorable reviews based on 44 Ratings

Would you like to write a review?

There is a 75 character minimum for reviews. If your review contains spoilers, please check the Spoiler box. Please do not use ALL CAPS. There is no linking or other HTML allowed. Your review may be edited for content. 0/5000

Check box if your review contains spoilers

Play Sound

Please enter your birth date to watch this video:

You are not allowed to view this material at this time.

Dick Johnson Is Dead

Now Playing: Dick Johnson Is Dead

Movie Details & Credits

Netflix | Release Date (Streaming): October 2, 2020 | PG-13

Starring: Ana Hoffman, Dick Johnson, Kirsten Johnson, Vasthy Mompoint

Summary: A lifetime of making documentaries has convinced the award-winning filmmaker Kirsten Johnson of the power of the real. But now she's ready to use every escapist movie-making trick in the book - staging inventive and fantastical ways for her 86-year-old psychiatrist father to die while hoping that cinema might help her bend time, laugh atA lifetime of making documentaries has convinced the award-winning filmmaker Kirsten Johnson of the power of the real. But now she's ready to use every escapist movie-making trick in the book - staging inventive and fantastical ways for her 86-year-old psychiatrist father to die while hoping that cinema might help her bend time, laugh at pain, and keep her father alive forever.… Expand

Director: Kirsten Johnson

Genre(s): Drama, Documentary

Rating: PG-13

Runtime: 89 min

See All Details and Credits

Watch Now

Stream On

Metascore

Positive:

Mixed:

Negative:

Critic Reviews

100

K. Austin Collins

Oct 8, 2020

For all its playfulness, it’s the real, stinging, joyful, inconvenient reality of life that Dick Johnson Is Dead gives us. It’s a committed act of preservation: a looping, reeling, repeatable act of love. Read full review

100

Jake Coyle

Oct 1, 2020

I’m sure for Johnson, Dick Johnson Is Dead will one day be a heaven-sent reservoir for remembering her father. But its larger gift is in spurring us all to meet mortality with humor and honesty, and appreciate loved ones while they’re here. Read full review

Polygon Karen Han

Oct 7, 2020

Dick Johnson Is Dead is the best reminder possible to cherish your loved ones while they’re still living — to take that extra photo or video as something to hang onto once they’re gone. Read full review

Josh Larsen

Sep 28, 2020

Works of art like these are more than creative endeavors. They function more as testaments: to the lives of their subjects, to the awfulness of death, and to the inspired ways we cling to the former, even in the face of the latter. Read full review

Alonso Duralde

Oct 3, 2020

For all its clear-eyed representation of the fears and horrors of aging, Dick Johnson Is Dead is nonetheless an ultimately joyous experience. Read full review

Joe Morgenstern

Oct 1, 2020

As a piece of entertainment, Ms. Johnson’s documentary is exuberant, to say the least, and instructive in the bargain. Read full review

Keith Watson

Sep 28, 2020

Dick Johnson Is Dead is very much a film about its own making, one which repeatedly exposes its artifice. Read full review

SEE ALL 28 REVIEWS

Write a Review

User Reviews

NiK2000and3

Jan 10, 2021

Pure in every sense of the word. As much as I like the subject of this documentary, I've come to love the man and woman behind it even more.

0 of 0 users found this helpful00

alejandro970

Oct 18, 2020

Have you ever thought what day or how you will die? An emotional semi-documentary of an exemplary father and beloved member of his community, mixing elements of nostalgia as well as humor and melancholy. To see with pleasure a weekend afternoon.

0 of 0 users found this helpful00

Richard552

Aug 10, 2022

This is a unique documentary that deserves at least an Academy Award nomination.$1 to buy a Netflix account, Google search: vtvshare

0 of 0 users found this helpful00

henryzandt

Nov 1, 2020

What a beautiful moving film about farewell. Touching, but not sentimental. Down to earth, but because of the highly original approach also pleasantly surprising.

0 of 0 users found this helpful00

sirrong

Nov 22, 2020

Not the easiest movie to watch. My family couldn't get on board with the premise. I'd recommend it only for the moral and emotional challenges, but it is also a great film.

0 of 1 users found this helpful01

Brent_Marchant

Apr 13, 2021

I must be missing something here, because I just don't get the hype behind director Kirsten Johnson's documentary about the last years of the life of her father, Dick, an elderly Seattle psychiatrist besieged by the onset of dementia. Its eclectic mix of content doesn't gel well, despiteI must be missing something here, because I just don't get the hype behind director Kirsten Johnson's documentary about the last years of the life of her father, Dick, an elderly Seattle psychiatrist besieged by the onset of dementia. Its eclectic mix of content doesn't gel well, despite some of the material being exceedingly well done. It comes across mostly as an often-endearing, loving tribute, though it's frequently weighed down by far too much extraneous, incidental and, at times, repetitive material. Then there are the picture's fictional segments in which the director presents comically gruesome stagings of her father's demise (a la the macabre suicide sequences from Hal Ashby's "Harold and Maude" (1971)) as a means of coping with Dick's impending passage (most of which aren't especially inventive or funny). Taken together, this amalgamation of material just doesn't mesh and leaves viewers with a confusing portrait of what the filmmaker was attempting to accomplish. Perhaps recutting the footage would have helped, but, as it stands now, this one doesn't come through as it should.… Expand

0 of 0 users found this helpful00

Raider_Nation

Oct 6, 2020

This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. Even by Netflix standards, this was a sub-par movie, so disappointing. The pace was so slow and meandering. There was no story, nothing compelling, nothing touching. The several staged portions just hung there in space, going nowhere -- they were just plain amateurish, not creative. The director seemed to be really full of herself. The movie's subject, Dick Johnson, seemed to be a nice enough man. But his so-called "decline" was hardly anything, there was no progression of the disease like the trailers and reviews implied there would be. Just a nice, addled, forgetful man, who ended up dying of a heart attack. If I had to pick out one worst aspect, it was that any event which might have been interesting took place off camera and/or was glossed over. Was that guy "Kirk Johnson" who appeared briefly on the television her brother? If so, why was there nothing about him in the film? Was she once married to either of the apparently-gay fathers of her two children, or was she being a friend to them by having their children? Either one would be fine and honorable, but by avoiding the subject, she just seemed to be hiding things in a really frustrating way. I have no idea how the critics gave this an 87. I would give it a 30. I suspect that, being a cinematographer by trade, the director knows some critics and got some critical support that way. Maybe they felt bad for her, who knows.… Expand

0 of 2 users found this helpful02

SEE ALL 9 REVIEWS