Powerful, deeply affecting films, from Relic to Dick Johnson Is Dead, are dispensing with worthiness and restraint to present the illness in a more robust and truthful way
I’ve yet to see a film that sufficiently gets to the heart of what it means to watch a loved one lose their mind to dementia. Those that have garnered attention and awards over the years (Still Alice, Iris, Away from Her), while incredibly affecting, are suffused with a worthiness or restraint that somehow neglects the dementia that I have witnessed. There are some notable exceptions: Michael Haneke’s Amour and Tamara Jenkins’ The Savages do well to convey the more savage aspects of the disease. But, on the whole, films dealing in dementia – an umbrella term that relates to the decline of brain function, interfering with memory, mental acuity, movement, spatial awareness, language and everyday activities such as making a cup of tea or buttoning up a cardigan – have felt lacking. This year, that changed.
Last month,
Netflix released Dick Johnson Is Dead, Kirsten Johnson’s documentary ostensibly about her father’s dementia. It opens with the titular Dick pushing his grandkids on a swing in a barn. It evoked memories of my own grandad taking me to the swings in the park and pushing me back and forth for longer than most other adults would tolerate. Dick Johnson looks old but animated. His movements are as limited as his facial expressions are spirited. The documentary proceeds to knit contradictions together; absurdity and mundanity sit side by side, joy is interwoven with grief.