Temple’s usual collage-edits subtly bring out this contemplative, limbo condition with footage of David Niven’s RAF pilot in A Matter of Life and Death, Cocteau and Nosferatu, and he assumes the role of Bergman’s chess-playing Death with his sympathetically interviewed friend and star. Johnson finds himself experiencing “lesser shades of melancholy”, and the loneliness peculiar to a state no one around him inhabits. It wasn’t all ecstasies and glorious shows, though. the condemned man” in his local pub, or the “great showbiz” of the mutual waves and final farewells as he closes gigs with Chuck Berry’s “Bye Bye Johnny”. Johnson is wittily aware of the brief advantages this gives him, whether as “a bit of a star. It was all concentrated into the moment." suddenly everything lifted off of me – present, future, past.
As Johnson explains, his death sentence didn’t perturb him, instead making him feel vividly alive: “The very paving stones seem to be shivering. That strain of emotion also made Oil City very moving, but is largely absent here. The Wilko theartsdesk met in Canvey one long, snug-bar afternoon before Oil City’s release was hugely entertaining but profoundly melancholy, in deep, constant mourning for his wife Irene’s death from cancer five years before. Johnson in 2015 is no longer the condemned man, and his melancholy has crept back Where Oil City was greased with the brute force, wild sparks, Essex wit and character of the Feelgoods, the sequel is Temple’s most meditative work. On hearing his bad news, Temple asked to spend time with Johnson for a second, surely final film. Johnson was its undoubted star, a fierce, goggle-eyed performer, brilliantly personal and potent guitarist, and erudite, eccentric Canvey Island sage. Johnson, like his old band, was largely forgotten when Julien Temple sought him out for his great Dr Feelgood documentary Oil City Confidential in 2009. Always with wit and insight, his instantly recognisable creative style is uniquely informative, compelling and entertaining.Then, in a dizzying turn, he didn’t die. Julien Temple is an documentary feature film director whose credits include The Filth and the Fury, The Future Is Unwritten – Joe Strummer, Oil City Confidential, Requiem to Detroit and London, and The Modern Babylon. So the great European filmmakers – Cocteau, Tarkovsky, Parajanov, Bergman, Buñuel – bear benevolent witness to his fate. The beauty of Wilko’s testimony is punctuated by exceptionally well-edited film clips that seem to comment obliquely on the guitarist’s predicament. Over a thirty-year career the British filmmaker Julien Temple has made a huge number of rock documentaries, but none more poetic than this. And then, surprisingly, there is a reprieve. “The idea that death is really imminent makes you realise what a wonderful thing it is to be alive,” he says. This is the “ecstasy” of the film’s title. Thoughtful, yes melancholic, no! Wilko faces his approaching end with great gaiety of spirit. Surely this will make the film thoughtful and melancholic?
The audience is all set for some interesting rock music reminiscences when, out of the blue, the musician is diagnosed as having pancreatic cancer. An eloquent man with stories to tell, he enjoys talking to the camera. Now he is a widower in his sixties, still living in the region where he was brought up, an isolated part of the Thames estuary that has managed to preserve its working-class character. Back in the 1970s, Wilko Johnson enjoyed fame as the lead guitarist in a British pub-rock band called Dr.
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