We the Living

HERE’S A MOMENT EARLY IN , the new film by Kirsten Johnson, that flaunts a particularly cinematic power. At its Sundance premiere in January, it jolted some people seated behind me into paroxysms of shock. Johnson has prepared her audience, via voiceover, for what promises to be an exploration of the impending death of her father—even though he’s actually alive and on screen, and complicit in her emotional and creative process(ing). Then we see Dick Johnson walking down the street and an air conditioner falling, swift as a seamless edit, onto his head. Even as the elder Johnson is beatifically splayed on the pavement, clinically shot from above while bloodred spreads on the sidewalk like a Giallo halo, I heard a whisper from the row