Film

The Devil and Daniel Johnston

A ragged, heartbreaking portrait of the West Virginia singer-songwriter whose cassette-tape recordings became a cult phenomenon, and whose lifelong battle with manic depression nearly consumed him. Built from Johnston's own obsessive archive of tapes, films and drawings, it's less a music doc than a case study in genius tangled up with illness — funny, unbearably sad, and never quite sure which one you're watching.

TMDb rating7.7

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Crumb1995

Terry Zwigoff's portrait of underground comic artist R. Crumb has the same unsettling mix of genius, family dysfunction and mental illness laid bare with unflinching intimacy.

But Crumb's brothers are even harder to watch than Daniel — this one goes to some genuinely bleak places.

Crumb poster

Dig!2004

A rock-doc about two rival bands, one self-destructing in real time on camera. Same voyeuristic pull of watching brilliance and chaos feed each other.

But More about ego and rock-star mythology than mental illness — the stakes feel lower, more rock-and-roll soap opera.

Dig! poster

Anvil! The Story of Anvil2008

An underdog metal band's decades-long quest for the break that never comes, told with real warmth. It's funny, then it isn't, in exactly the way this film is.

But Lighter touch overall — nobody's psychiatric history is on the table, just stubborn hope against diminishing returns.

Anvil! The Story of Anvil poster

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

All That Money Can Buy1941no page yet

The title of the documentary directly echoes this film, and both are ultimately about a bargain — talent, or salvation, purchased at ruinous cost to the self.

A New Hampshire farmer sells his soul for prosperity in this Oscar-winning fantasy — a literal deal-with-the-devil parable that the documentary's title is quietly winking at.

But Creaky 1940s morality-play acting and pacing; it's a folk tale, not a character study, and asks nothing of your empathy.

More like this (8)

Amy2015

Asif Kapadia's assembly of Amy Winehouse's own footage and voice creates the same effect: a genius destroyed in plain sight while everyone around her watched.

But It's a harder, sadder watch with a fixed, tragic ending — less room for the redemptive flickers Johnston's story allows.

Amy poster

Marwencol2010

A man builds an elaborate miniature world to process trauma and mental illness, and the film treats his art with the same tender seriousness this one gives Daniel's tapes.

But Quieter and stranger — less music, more meditative, and the trauma at its centre is trauma of a very different kind.

Marwencol poster

Big Star: Nothing Can Hurt Me2013no page yet

The story of a band nobody bought but everybody who heard them loved, shadowed by one member's mental illness and early death. Cult adoration versus commercial failure, just like Daniel's.

But Less focused on the illness itself — more a eulogy for lost potential than an examination of a mind.

Grizzly Man2005

Herzog's portrait of a man consumed by his own obsession, using the subject's own footage against him with real tenderness underneath the horror.

But Bears, not bipolar disorder — the danger here is external, and the tone is colder and more clinical.

Grizzly Man poster

Searching for Sugar Man2012

A musician's obscurity turned into legend turned into resurrection — that same strange arc of an artist's work outliving his own belief in it.

But Far more triumphant and tidy — this one wants you to feel uplifted, not unsettled.

Searching for Sugar Man poster

Jandek on Corwood2003no page yet

A documentary about an outsider musician so reclusive nobody can even confirm basic facts about him — the flip side of Daniel's compulsive self-documentation.

But Deliberately opaque and frustrating by design — it offers almost no answers, which some will find maddening rather than mysterious.

Crazy Ex-Girlfriend2015

Both use music as the mechanism through which mental illness gets expressed and survived, just at opposite ends of the register — one deadly serious, one determined to make you laugh first.

A musical comedy series that treats bipolar disorder with startling honesty underneath the jokes and show-tune pastiches — proof the same illness can be examined in a completely different key.

But It's a sitcom, tonally the opposite of the documentary's grainy sadness — the songs are catchy and the mood is, mostly, buoyant.

Crazy Ex-Girlfriend poster

American Splendor2003

Both are portraits of outsider artists whose raw, untrained work became beloved precisely because it refused professionalism — and both blur the line between the real person and the myth built around them.

A hybrid biopic-documentary about underground comic artist Harvey Pekar, blending real footage of the man with dramatized scenes of his life — untrained genius rendered without polish or flattery.

But Comedy-drama rather than documentary proper, and Pekar's crankiness is a very different flavour of difficult than Daniel's fragility.

American Splendor poster

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