

Johnson’s conclusion – “I wasn’t supposed to be here at all, so it’s all a bonus” – at least provides an uplifting coda to Temple’s film. The life-saving surgery leaves him a diabetic the mental impact of surviving is equally stressful, as he wrestles with loneliness and melancholia. It seems, despite the circumstances, tremendous fun.īut although there is a happy ending – dear reader, he lives! – at the same time Johnson’s survival presents another set of problems.
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An album with Roger Daltrey is hastily convened and becomes a success: Johnson finds himself on the chat show circuit. As bonus features on The Ecstasy of Wilko Johnson, included are a watch with Wilko version of the movie which follows every flicker of emotion as the. It’s fantastic!” A final encore of “Johnny B Goode” assumes talismanic properties. Given his deadline, Johnson embarks on a farewell tour, beginning in Japan – “a great piece of showbusiness,” he observes approvingly.

While some of the film inevitably overlaps with Oil City Confidential – in particular, the histories of Canvey and Johnson’s old band, Dr Feelgood – the focus is on Johnson and his own wide-ranging interests, including astronomy and Viking lore. “It takes eight and a half hours with a break for lunch to read Paradise Lost,” he mentions in passing. To that extent, it forms a telling contrast to the gloomy presentation of the star musician’s life and death in Asif Kapadia’s recent film Amy. Footage from A Matter Of Life And Death, Hamlet At Elsinore, Nosferatu and Orphée offer complimentary views on death, meanwhile readings from Traherne, Marlowe, Blake and Milton underscore Johnson’s former career as an English teacher. Biography or not, music film or not (for what it’s worth, Temple claims it is neither), The Ecstasy of Wilko Johnson allows us to see the world as a particular musician sees it. Indeed, for much of the film, Johnson quite literally looks death in the face: in a nod to Ingmar Bergman’s film The Seventh Seal, Temple shoots Johnson on the jetty at his native Canvey Island, recounting his extraordinary story over a game of chess with a hooded opponent. Indeed, Temple’s follow-up to Oil City Confidential finds Johnson reflecting on his life and current circumstances with gleeful aplomb. Since being given 10 months to live in January 2013, Johnson admits he has never felt so good. As he explains, Johnson felt “vividly alive… everything was tingling… present, future, past, it was all concentrated down into that moment.”
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Julien Temple’s new film about Wilko Johnson takes its title from an unexpected state of euphoria the guitarist first experienced walking home after being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. As bonus features on The Ecstasy of Wilko Johnson, included are a watch with Wilko version of the movie which follows every flicker of emotion as the subject of the movie views the finished product Additionally there s footage from the first rehearsal of the band after Wilko s life-saving operation, plus also the full Q&A that took place.
