![]() ![]() If more literal-minded viewers would happily trade a few variations on “I’m going to die so are we all” for some prosaic details about Johnson’s life, they can of course turn to Oil City Confidential, the 2009 doc Temple made about Dr. Steve Organ‘s digital cinematography isn’t always a match for the gorgeous vistas we see when Johnson ventures out to the Canvey Island seaside, but on the whole the visuals serve their purpose nicely. Temple piles on relevant film clips from Cocteau, Hamlet, Bunuel and others, and stages some of his interviews while projecting abstract images on Johnson’s face or carefully staging his environment. His calmness (spoiler ahead) is only slightly less impressive once we realize that much of this testimony was recorded after, having outlived his prognosis by many months, Johnson learned that his massive tumor might not be as inoperable as his first doctor thought. (He also converses, a la The Seventh Seal, with Death over a chess game the twist is that he plays the hooded reaper as well as himself.) He’s a remarkably charismatic subject, and his philosophical equanimity about the prospect of dying within 10 months comes across so naturally one wonders if more cancer patients might be able to achieve it. Johnson’s conclusion – “I wasn’t supposed to be here at all, so it’s all a bonus” – at least provides an uplifting coda to Temple’s film.Much more erudite than your average rocker, Johnson studied literature at university and still revels in it, dropping lines from Milton and Chaucer into his conversation with the camera. The life-saving surgery leaves him a diabetic the mental impact of surviving is equally stressful, as he wrestles with loneliness and melancholia. It seems, despite the circumstances, tremendous fun.īut although there is a happy ending – dear reader, he lives! – at the same time Johnson’s survival presents another set of problems. ![]() An album with Roger Daltrey is hastily convened and becomes a success: Johnson finds himself on the chat show circuit. It’s fantastic!” A final encore of “Johnny B Goode” assumes talismanic properties. Given his deadline, Johnson embarks on a farewell tour, beginning in Japan – “a great piece of showbusiness,” he observes approvingly. While some of the film inevitably overlaps with Oil City Confidential – in particular, the histories of Canvey and Johnson’s old band, Dr Feelgood – the focus is on Johnson and his own wide-ranging interests, including astronomy and Viking lore. “It takes eight and a half hours with a break for lunch to read Paradise Lost,” he mentions in passing. Footage from A Matter Of Life And Death, Hamlet At Elsinore, Nosferatu and Orphée offer complimentary views on death, meanwhile readings from Traherne, Marlowe, Blake and Milton underscore Johnson’s former career as an English teacher. At one point, recalling a light snowfall in a remote Japanese retreat, he rejoices that he had no camera to capture the moment, leaving the business of future record to Temple, freed by the. Indeed, for much of the film, Johnson quite literally looks death in the face: in a nod to Ingmar Bergman’s film The Seventh Seal, Temple shoots Johnson on the jetty at his native Canvey Island, recounting his extraordinary story over a game of chess with a hooded opponent. ![]() Indeed, Temple’s follow-up to Oil City Confidential finds Johnson reflecting on his life and current circumstances with gleeful aplomb. Since being given 10 months to live in January 2013, Johnson admits he has never felt so good. As he explains, Johnson felt “vividly alive… everything was tingling… present, future, past, it was all concentrated down into that moment.” His fatal cancer diagnosis (that he later survives) inspires a film that is at the same time both deadly serious and deliciously ecstatic. Julien Temple’s new film about Wilko Johnson takes its title from an unexpected state of euphoria the guitarist first experienced walking home after being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.
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