Film

Dick Johnson Is Dead

Kirsten Johnson stages her father's death again and again—by staircase, falling air conditioner, heart attack—preparing for the real thing even as his memory fails. Playful, morbid, and unexpectedly moving, it treats grief as something you can rehearse for, and dementia as something the camera can witness but not fix. For anyone who's laughed at a funeral.

TMDb rating7.1

If you liked this

The Farewell2019

Lulu Wang's semi-autobiographical film uses a similar trick—keeping a loved one in the dark about their own mortality—for a family comedy that's just as tender and funny about grief as Johnson's film.

But It's fiction dressed as memoir, so if you wanted more documentary rawness, this softer, staged version may feel like it's holding you at arm's length.

The Farewell poster

Cameraperson2016

Kirsten Johnson's own memoir-through-other-people's-footage, assembled from decades as a documentary cinematographer, is the direct predecessor to this film and shows exactly where her interest in mortality, family, and the ethics of filming real life began.

But It's fragmentary and demands patience—there's no throughline story, just moments stitched together, which can feel more like an essay than a film.

Cameraperson poster

Stories We Tell2012

Sarah Polley restages her own family's secrets with actors, blurring memory and fiction the way Johnson blurs death and performance, and asks hard questions about who gets to tell a family's story.

But The twist-heavy structure works best going in cold, so knowing too much beforehand dulls its impact.

Stories We Tell poster

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Harold and Maude1971

Both films use staged, theatrical fake deaths—performed again and again—as a way of defusing the fear of the real thing, just fifty years and one genre apart.

Decades before Johnson staged her father's death, Hal Ashby's cult classic gave us a young man who fakes elaborate suicides for fun before falling for a septuagenarian who teaches him to actually live—black comedy about death as rehearsal, not tragedy.

But Its whimsy and 1970s sensibility can feel twee or dated if you're not already fond of shaggy counterculture comedies.

Harold and Maude poster
More like this (8)

Amour2012

Haneke's unsparing portrait of an elderly couple facing physical decline is the humourless counterpart to Johnson's playful approach—same subject, opposite temperature, and just as essential.

But There's no dark comedy cushion here; it's slow, formal, and genuinely bleak with little relief.

Amour poster

Faces Places2017no page yet

Agnès Varda, near the end of her life, roams the French countryside with a young artist making giant portraits of strangers—a warm, playful meditation on aging and memory from another director who refused to be solemn about mortality.

But It wanders without much narrative urgency, and its charm depends on patience for Varda's whimsy.

Life Itself2014

Roger Ebert, dying of cancer, let cameras follow him through his final months with unblinking honesty—startling and moving in ways that echo Dick Johnson's own reckoning with the camera and the end.

But The medical footage is graphic and unsentimental; some viewers find it harder to sit with than Johnson's gentler approach.

Life Itself poster

Grey Gardens1976

This 1975 classic about a reclusive mother and daughter living in decayed splendor helped invent the modern family documentary, and its mix of tenderness, comedy, and discomfort still feels startlingly contemporary.

But Some viewers find its subjects' eccentricity uncomfortably close to exploitation, and the pacing is stranger and slower than modern docs.

Grey Gardens poster

20,000 Days on Earth2014

Nick Cave narrates a fictionalised day of his own life, staging therapy sessions and conversations with the dead—a documentary that, like Johnson's, refuses to pretend the camera isn't changing what it records.

But It's moody and elliptical rather than informative, more mood piece than biography, which won't suit everyone.

20,000 Days on Earth poster

Marwencol2010

A man rebuilds his shattered life after a brutal attack by creating an elaborate miniature World War II town populated by dolls—a real example of using fantasy and staging to survive trauma, much like Johnson's rehearsed deaths.

But Its subject is stranger and sadder than Johnson's film, and the tonal shifts can feel abrupt.

Marwencol poster

Waltz with Bashir2008

Both films use artifice—staging, restaging, drawing—as a tool for approaching something too painful or too vast to point a camera at directly.

This animated documentary about a filmmaker piecing together his suppressed memories of the 1982 Lebanon War proves that drawing reality, rather than filming it, can get you closer to an unbearable truth than straight footage ever could.

But It's about war and complicity, not family and mortality, and the animation, however beautiful, keeps you at a colder distance.

Waltz with Bashir poster

Weekend at Bernie's1989no page yet

Where Johnson rehearses her father's death with love and dread, this film rehearses denying a death entirely for laughs—same core absurdity, opposite emotional stakes.

Two guys prop up their dead boss's corpse and pretend he's still alive for an entire weekend—it's dumb, it's a farce, and it's the trashiest possible cousin to Johnson's own repeated, cheerful stagings of a death that hasn't happened yet.

But It's a broad '80s slapstick comedy with zero interest in grief or meaning—pure goofball entertainment, not a meditation on anything.

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The Haunting of Hill House, Russian Doll, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Amour, Manchester by the Sea, Synecdoche, New York, Steel Magnolias, Tokyo Story, Stories We Tell, The Farewell, The Father, Val, Cléo from 5 to 7, Bo Burnham: Inside, Relic, The Babadook, The Savages, Terms of Endearment, Still Walking, The Big Sick, Tarnation, Sherman's March, Swiss Army Man, Cameraperson, Forgotten Island