Intoxicating meditation on mortality by legendary axe man Wilko Johnson. Served a death sentence by pancreatic cancer, Johnson vows to live in the moment. And Temple's overflowing visual cocktail serves up Bunuel, Tarkovsky, Cocteau and Michael Powell as fellow travellers on this death trip, with literary contributions from Shakespeare and Thomas Traherne ("And all the world was mine and I the only spectator and enjoyer of it"), while the terminally articulate Wilko happily quotes Blake and Milton straight to camera. It's a moving account of a man looking at death without an ounce of self-pity or false piety, while the verbal and visual richness provide a bouncy metaphysical trampoline of ideas. Despite the cinematic leitmotiv, from Bergman's The Seventh Seal, of Death playing chess with Wilko on the shore of Canvey Island, it's Johnson's rock'n'roll stoicism, and his love of life that live on in the viewer's mind, and make you feel you've had a glimpse of both death and resurrection, pulsating with R&B urgency.
Review of The Ecstasy of Wilko Johnson
