Netflix’s <em>Dick Johnson Is Dead</em> Is a Bizarre Cinematic Experiment
The new documentary is an audacious and bittersweet attempt to confront mortality.
begins with a touching tableau. Kirsten Johnson, a documentary filmmaker, has trained her camera on her father, Dick, who is playfully chasing her children around a barn and singing silly songs. “Be careful, because the straw’s really slippery!” she says offscreen, anxiously tracking her father’s shoes sliding around the straw-covered ground. Soon enough, he slips onto his back, laughs, and shouts to his daughter, “Did you get it? Wonderful, I’ve always wanted to be in the movies,” at once
