The documentary’s freeform but never meandering progress follows the course of his thoughts, which touch upon such matters as Viking lore and astronomy, but apart from a prolonged meditation on his lifetime home of Canvey Island in Essex, they seldom turn overtly autobiographical. The latter are heavy on surreal visions suggestive of an afterlife, despite Johnson’s admitted atheism they include clips from works by screen surrealists Jean Cocteau, Luis Bunuel and Sergei Parajanov, as well as spiritually questing classics like Andrei Tarkovsky’s “The Mirror” and Ingmar Bergman’s “The Seventh Seal.” Also in the mix are filmed incarnations of Milton and Shakespeare, because, thick working-class accident notwithstanding, Johnson is indeed a “literary type” who would’ve alternately enjoyed a career in literary academia. (The latter, rather shockingly, proves the most commercially successful recording for either collaborator in more than 30 years.) Having recently buried his wife of some 40 years, and as yet feeling fine (he decides to forgo chemo, which would likely add little time and much pain), he first sets about checking off a couple of bucket-list items: a last trip to his beloved Japan, where he plays some gigs, and finally the recording of a long-discussed album with his old friend Roger Daltry. Instead, the focus is primarily on Johnson’s present tense in his mid-60s, when he discovers out of the blue that he has inoperable pancreatic cancer - and a life expectancy of about 10 months. Feelgood after just six years in 1977, later fronting his own band, playing with Ian Dury and others - though little of that later history is recounted here. Indeed, he left the British R&B “pub rock” movement leader Dr. That would likely preclude the U.S., where the band Johnson is primarily known for never got a commercial foothold. The engaging result should do well as a broadcast item, particularly wherever its protagonist has a substantial fan base. A terminal cancer diagnosis proves more liberating than traumatic for the historied rock-guitarist subject of “ The Ecstasy of Wilko Johnson.” Julien Temple’s characteristically playful, pop-culture-savvy approach to the documentary form might seem ill suited to the subject of mortality, but veteran English axman Johnson’s unexpectedly buoyant response to very bad news makes for a film about saying goodbye that is itself void of grief, fear or regret.
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