The Ecstasy of Wilko Johnson (2015)
The Ecstasy of Wilko Johnson confronts our worst nightmares of impending death and turns them upside down. It tells the extraordinary, yet universal story of legendary musician Wilko Johnson who, diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and given a few months to live, accepted his fate with uplifting positivity and embarked on a farewell tour, capturing the imagination of the world as he went. But like every good story Wilko's has a damn fine twist in its tail. Two years later and confounding the odds, Wilko wakes up in a hospital bed, unexpectedly sentenced to live, having now to integrate those enlightened lessons learnt under sentence of death into the unexpected and ongoing future of his life.
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Simply A Masterpiece
Good concept, poorly executed.
everything you have heard about this movie is true.
It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.
Julien Temple has a rep for musical oddities - he rose to fame with the Sex Pistols' Great Rock 'n; Roll Swindle and his Dr Feelgood documentary, Oil City Confidential, was highly regarded - it was presumably during the making of the latter that he developed his relationship with their legendary axe wielder that led to his following Wilko's pancreatic cancer story that is the basis of the ecstasy of Wilko Johnson.The format is possibly unique in that the documentary only really features one individual, the eponymous character with a few fleeting contributions from The Who's Roger Daltrey. But don't assume for one second that this means the 92 minutes lacks colour. For a start Wilko Johnson, who appears on stage to be a bit of a clown and who talks with a wide boy London estuary accent, is actually incredibly well read and educated. At one point in his unlikely career he was a school teacher (English I assume). It's this aspect of his personality that fires Temple's imagination because through Temple riffs off Johnson's fevered imagination and regular quotations from Shakespeare, Milton etc and sets these against outtakes from Tarkovsky movies. A central motif is taken from the Seventh Seal where Johnson plays Chess with the grim reaper played by...Johnson.The premise is this. Temple was recruited to film the last eight months of Johnson's life after he was diagnosed with terminal pancreatic Cancer. Only, he doesn't die. The movie begins in early 2013 and Johnson is alive to this day.But in the belief that these are his last days on earth Johnson stalks the world of a sort of purgatory as he says his farewell to adoring fans, records a valedictory album with Roger Daltrey and philosophises on the meaning of death, completely free of self pity.It's a miraculous achievement and feels incredibly intimate as you are drawn into Johnson's nadir. What makes it spectacular is Temple's clever editing and the recurring death motif's (a shadowy behaved figure stalks the background constantly (perhaps the companion of the Bergmanesque reaper).What also makes the film remarkable is his solitude. Other than the brief Paltry moments we see no reference to his family other than the revelation that his wife, and childhood sweetheart, passed away a decade ago. It makes him seem all the more vulnerable.I strongly recommend that you see this fascinating insight into how a unique man prepares for death. Enlightening.
Genius.Firstly, having lived with relatives who have suffered various forms of this disease, both now & in the past, i found this documentary on Dr Feelgood's main guitar mentalist, Wilko Johnson, both cathartic, heart-breaking but above all inspirational & transcendental in the best traditions of poets like Blake et al.Wilko might look like a lunatic, but underneath the Canvey Island local rough n tumble exterior lies a soul of truly visionary proportions. His ability to express his journey (an appalling word to use i know but.....), along with Temple's outstanding visual sense, has provided the world with one of the most immersive, harrowing but ultimately inspiring pieces of documentary film-making i've ever seen.The heart of the film both addresses & captures the otherworldly loneliness Wilko experiences after his initial diagnosis, something a family member empathized with greatly. His ability to reference & pinpoint some of the most profound works in English literature, combined with his "Berserker" approach to proper r&b, underpinned by Temple's editing in of excerpts from Tarkovsky's "Stalker" etc, provide a truly epic tale of our place in the unfolding realms we call reality, life & the universe.As a past aficionado of lsd-induced explorations, my only regret with the film was learning that Wilko was an ex English lit teacher - if only my own teachers had had half the attitude and balls of this man, i'd have read far far more of the extensive works he cites throughout the doc before experiencing them through chance.What a bloke and what a tale. Immense film making.11/10
Intoxicating meditation on mortality by legendary axe man Wilko Johnson. Served a death sentence by pancreatic cancer, Johnson vows to live in the moment. And Temple's overflowing visual cocktail serves up Bunuel, Tarkovsky, Cocteau and Michael Powell as fellow travellers on this death trip, with literary contributions from Shakespeare and Thomas Traherne ("And all the world was mine and I the only spectator and enjoyer of it"), while the terminally articulate Wilko happily quotes Blake and Milton straight to camera. It's a moving account of a man looking at death without an ounce of self-pity or false piety, while the verbal and visual richness provide a bouncy metaphysical trampoline of ideas. Despite the cinematic leitmotiv, from Bergman's The Seventh Seal, of Death playing chess with Wilko on the shore of Canvey Island, it's Johnson's rock'n'roll stoicism, and his love of life that live on in the viewer's mind, and make you feel you've had a glimpse of both death and resurrection, pulsating with R&B urgency.