''The Devil and Daniel Johnston'' is a 2005
documentary film
A documentary film or documentary is a non-fictional film, motion-picture intended to "document reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction, education or maintaining a Recorded history, historical record". Bill Nichols (film critic), Bil ...
about American musician
Daniel Johnston
Daniel Dale Johnston (January 22, 1961 – September 11, 2019) was an American singer, musician and artist regarded as a significant figure in outsider, lo-fi, and alternative music scenes. Most of his work consisted of cassettes recorded a ...
. It chronicles Johnston's life from childhood up to the present, with an emphasis on his experiences with
bipolar disorder
Bipolar disorder, previously known as manic depression, is a mental disorder characterized by periods of depression and periods of abnormally elevated mood that last from days to weeks each. If the elevated mood is severe or associated with ...
, and how it manifested itself in
demon
A demon is a malevolent supernatural entity. Historically, belief in demons, or stories about demons, occurs in religion, occultism, literature, fiction, mythology, and folklore; as well as in media such as comics, video games, movies, ani ...
ic
self-obsession. The film was directed by
Jeff Feuerzeig
Jeff Feuerzeig (born 1964) is an American film director and screenwriter best known for ''The Devil and Daniel Johnston'', his profile of cult musician and outsider artist Daniel Johnston, for which he was awarded the Directing prize for Document ...
and produced by Henry S. Rosenthal.
Reception
Critical reception
On
Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...
the film has an approval rating of 89% based on 110 reviews.
On
Metacritic
Metacritic is a website that review aggregator, aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted arithmetic mean, weighted average). M ...
the film has a score of 77 out of 100, based on reviews from 33 critics.
Awards
The film won the
Documentary Directing Award at the 2005
Sundance Film Festival
The Sundance Film Festival (formerly Utah/US Film Festival, then US Film and Video Festival) is an annual film festival organized by the Sundance Institute. It is the largest independent film festival in the United States, with more than 46,66 ...
.
Home media
It is available on
DVD
The DVD (common abbreviation for Digital Video Disc or Digital Versatile Disc) is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 1995 and first released on November 1, 1996, in Japan. The medium can store any kind ...
from
Sony Pictures Home Entertainment
Sony Pictures Home Entertainment (abbreviated as SPHE) is the home video distribution division of Sony Pictures Entertainment, a subsidiary of Sony Group Corporation.
Background
SPHE is responsible for the distribution of the Sony Pictures lib ...
, which includes a supplemental feature documenting the reunion between Johnston and his long-time obsession and muse, Laurie Allen. A manufacture on demand Blu-ray was released through Sony's Choice Collection on October 19, 2016.
References
External links
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Daniel Johnston
2005 films
2005 documentary films
American documentary films
Sundance Film Festival award winners
Documentary films about music and musicians
Sony Pictures Classics films
Documentary films about mental disorders
Films shot in New York City
Films shot in West Virginia
Outsider music
2000s English-language films
2000s American films
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