In January 2014, 66-year-old Wilko Johnson, former guitarist with legendary pub-rock band Dr Feelgood, is told by a doctor that he has pancreatic cancer and 10 months to live. Or 12 with chemotherapy. He decides to forego treatment and face his last months in the presence of a film camera. The result is director Julien Temple's The Ecstasy of Wilko Johnson (2015).
Temple's directorial debut was the Sex Pistols' The Great Rock'n'Roll Swindle (1980); in 2009 he directed a documentary about Dr Feelgood, Oil City Confidential*. On hearing of Wilko's diagnosis and imminent demise, Temple set out to document the final months of the guitarist's life.
The resulting film is a work of wonder, of joy, of profound philosophical importance. Faced with the prospect of death, Wilko Johnson resigns himself to eternal oblivion. Being an atheist, he dismisses hope in any conscious life after bodily death. This sharpens his senses, his experience of the here and now; he begins to notice the everyday, the commonplace, and find beauty in it. This is purest existentialism.
There is no sadness, no self-pity; Wilko radiates a sense of a man who has lived a life that fulfilled his human potential. It is clear that he is an intelligent and mindful human being, observant, sensitive to the Universe (literally - he is an amateur astronomer),
I can't help thinking that Wilko is an old soul - what else would draw a young man from a working-class home in Canvey Island to make it through to university to study ancient Icelandic? It is clear to me at least that this extremely well-read man has a passion for times past that suggests some kind of a spiritual, metaphysical, supernatural connection with History, across History.
In a particularly moving part of the film, Wilko recounts the death from cancer, ten years earlier, of his childhood sweetheart and wife of 40 years, Irene. Painful memories that throw into relief the notions of human loneliness, togetherness and solitude.
The film intersected with music, film and literature that feature in my canon. Blind Willie Johnson's Dark was the Night, Cold was the Ground, Thomas Tallis's Spem in Alium, Ralph Vaughan Williams' Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis, Interstellar Overdrive by Pink Floyd, William Wordsworth's The Daffodils and Hamlet's 'to sleep, perchance to dream, aye, there's the rub' [both quoted have been several times on this blog], clips from Tarkovsky's Stalker and Eduard Artemyev's haunting soundtrack to that film. References like this are close to home, they feel to me like a justification that I've been searching in the right places. And of course, Bergman's Seventh Seal, overarching the whole film, with Wilko as the mediaeval knight playing chess against Death - also played by himself.
Much of the film is shot in Canvey Island, a place that drew me there many times as a young man to photograph it in black and white. The unique atmosphere of the refinery island, lying below sea level, vulnerable to flooding yet a pleasure destination for the East End, is beautifully captured.
It's full-length feature, but it is worth every minute of your time watching something as deeply moving as this. If your time is short, please spend just one minute and 12 seconds of your life watching from 04:00 to 05:12. It encapsulates the Glory of Being Alive. Watch it, do. And as I watched it, I thought that it was no coincidence that serendipity brought this film to my notice during this Lent.Peace of Mind
This time six years ago:
The Name of God and the Consciousness of Everything
This time eight years ago:
The Church and Democracy
Sui generis!
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