![]() ![]() These prime cuts of Anglo-American pub rock are complemented by soundtrack choices that demonstrate the film-maker’s art – Johnson’s ecstatic visions as seen through Temple’s camera are sonically underpinned by the historicised Englishness of Ralph Vaughan Williams’ Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis and the spirituality (oddly appropriate, despite Johnson’s enthusiastically proclaimed atheism) of Gregorio Allegri’s Miserere. Staring into the middle distance and duck-walking around the stage, Johnson is the exemplary axe-man, his guitar constantly chopping and cutting – a style blurring the boundaries between rhythm and lead. We see a fair bit (but not enough) of Wilko Johnson the rocker, from the early days with Dr Feelgood through various later stages in his career up to and including some of the farewell shows. On impressive display here is the learned Englishness of the grammar school and university English literature curriculum, an almost-lost world whose utility Johnson demonstrates perfectly. Like William Blake, Johnson can now clearly see the world in a grain of sand, and his constant references to the ecstatic works of Blake, Wordsworth, Milton and Shakespeare provide the cultural keystone of his interpretive grid. ![]() While it is driven by the acceptance of a biological process, the expression of Johnson’s elation is not naturalised but cultural, and in representing this the film is a profound celebration of both Johnson’s and Temple’s culture. We gain comprehensive insight into the ways in which Johnson makes use of his accumulated knowledge in responding to his condition. This new film is not and was not intended as a straight biography, but we do learn much about Johnson’s education and family background, his non-musical interests – he provides enthusiastic reflections on history and astronomy – and his favourite places. Johnson has always been a photogenic and engaging interviewee (as captured by Temple in Oil City Confidential, his 2009 film about the band Johnson co-founded, Dr Feelgood). The representation of Johnson’s positive acceptance of his prognosis, and what follows, is superbly realised by Temple. ![]() Refusing the offered chemotherapy as bringing too much pain for too little gain, he immediately set about enjoying to the full what he had been told would be his final year, making a series of farewell tours and guest appearances recording a successful album with The Who vocalist Roger Daltrey, Going Back Home and finding time to reflect on his newly found ecstatic response to the world around him in a series of interviews that form the backbone of Julien Temple’s intriguing new documentary. He accepted the diagnosis without demur – or a second opinion – and emerged from the consultant’s room with a transfigured, euphoric sense of the beauty of life. In early 2013, rock guitarist Wilko Johnson was diagnosed with apparently terminal pancreatic cancer. ![]()
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