Dick Johnson Is Dead

"Now on Netflix, Dick Johnson is Dead belongs to a small but valuable group of documentaries that utilise the art of theatre and filmmaking as a means to confront close-to-unbearable subject matter."

"Johnson and her father share a sense of humor, and the bond between them informs the finest moments of Dick Johnson Is Dead. Yet I can’t stop thinking about the friend crying, alone, in the church, so verklempt he forgot he was in a movie — one place where this documentary’s joyful dark humor isn’t as amusing as it should be."

"Maybe Dick Johnson is Dead is the filmmaking equivalent of the band on the deck of the Titanic playing their hearts out while the water rises. If so, the movie is aware that it might be that thing, and seems content to be that thing. That's every movie, every story. When the end is preordained, you might as well make music."

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

"Is this he most radical film of 2020? When film-maker Kirsten Johnson’s father developed dementia, she decided to make an unusual Netflix documentary that challenges our notions of reality."

"Dick Johnson is Dead is both a poetic act of defiance and a portrait of love at the end of a life."

"At once a celebration and a lament, simultaneously jubilant and ineffably sad, it’s a film worth sticking around to see."

"Oscillating from intimate father-daughter exchanges to surreal meta-fictional tangents, the movie lives within its riveting paradox, reflecting the queasy uncertainty surrounding its subject’s fate."

"Dick Johnson Is Dead is a funny, touching and, to be sure, unique film, and the Johnsons are a very fortunate father and daughter."