The real battle, he realises, is to appreciate life in the absence of death, something that proves a lot trickier than it sounds. Only when offered the Blade Runner-esque possibility of “more life” does Johnson briefly lose his positive focus, the rigours of surgery and the luxury of time allowing the demons of depression to encroach briefly upon his state of grace. All the more ironic, then, that the prospect of an 11th-hour reprieve allows the first note of doubt to seep into this symphony of sanguine acceptance. It’s significant that while recording Wilko’s putative last will and testament, Temple was facing up to the loss of his mother (to whom this film is dedicated), clearly drawing strength from Johnson’s life-affirming spirit. ![]() At one point, recalling a light snowfall in a remote Japanese retreat, he rejoices that he had no camera to capture the moment, leaving the business of future record to Temple, freed by the apparent imminence of oblivion. Images of nature flash before us – magnified and intensified – but it’s Wilko’s voice that captivates, quoting Donne, Blake and Milton as readily as Muddy Waters, contemplating the strange beauty of towers burning at the break of day. Talking to Temple, Johnson seems like a man whose eyes have been opened for the first time, finally relishing the experience of life on Earth. Refusing treatment (“If it’s gonna kill me, I don’t want it to bore me”), he embarks on a farewell tour, serenading international crowds with Bye Bye Johnny and recording the new album Going Back Home with Roger Daltrey. Sidestepping the five phases of the oft-quoted Kübler-Ross Grief Cycle (denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance), Johnson reacts to his own diagnosis with a sense of elation, a euphoric awareness of life. Talking to Temple, Johnson seems like a man whose eyes have been opened for the first time Meanwhile, a motif inspired by Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal places Wilko on a sea wall playing chess with Death, reflecting playfully upon the transformative power of mortality. Significantly, Powell and Pressburger’s A Matter of Life and Death proves an alchemical element amid a brilliantly chosen blizzard of clips from FW Murnau, Jean Cocteau, Luis Buñuel, Andrei Tarkovsky et al (although I could have lived without the decapitated chickens of Sergei Parajanov’s The Colour of Pomegranates). In some ways, this companion piece is more universal, its focus broadened from the deconstruction of 12-bar blues to wider issues of the soul. Using scattershot movie clips (a directorial trademark) to emphasise the band’s outlaw status, Temple painted Wilko as a star-gazing seer – a one-time teacher and future astronomer erudite, energetic and electrifying. Temple previously documented Johnson’s life and works in 2009’s Oil City Confidential, a blistering account of the “Thames Delta” blues that once made Dr Feelgood Britain’s best live act. Yet here he was – larger than life, stranger than fiction, and cooler than Canvey Island on a rainswept afternoon. ![]() Indeed, Temple’s unexpectedly celebratory film began life as a chronicle of a death foretold, doctors having given Wilko less than a year to live following a diagnosis of pancreatic cancer in 2012. It was an extraordinary show, made all the more remarkable by the fact that Johnson wasn’t supposed to be there at all. “B loody hell, man, I’m supposed to be dead!” Following the recent London premiere of Julien Temple’s latest kaleidoscopic documentary, Wilko Johnson played a sweat-streaked gig at the 100 Club on Oxford Street, strutting up and down the small stage like a berserker, swapping gleeful looks with the great Blockheads bassist, Norman Watt-Roy, machine-gunning the audience with the staccato strumming of his black Telecaster.
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