Johnny Kitties: Celebrating Johnny Depp Film #57. The Professor (2018)

[What is Johnny Kitties? See Johnny Kitties: Celebrating Johnny Depp for all the details. Visit the Johnny Kitties page for a full list of Johnny Depp's filmography and links to all previous Johnny Kitties blog posts.]

"The Professor is a quirky comedy of sorts – stark, enchanting, funny, tragic. It's rare to see comedies that tackle the subject of death." Danny Houston

"Accepting one's mortality and the fact that we're going to die shouldn't be a depressing thing." Wayne Roberts

"May we forever remember that in each and every moment, we are composing the stories of our lives. Let's aim to make it a meaningful read or at least an interesting one." Richard Brown (Johnny Depp)

Life is what you make of it. 

After learning that he has terminal lung cancer and maybe six months to live, Professor Richard Brown (Johnny Depp) realizes that he has no time to waste and spends the rest of it teaching his last students to say what they mean, live however they want, and make the most out of life. Taking his own advice, Richard speaks without a filter, indulges in his whims, and creates his own path toward the exit. Through The Professor, writer/director Wayne Roberts poses tough questions and makes bold statements to remind us that death is an important part of life.

The Professor got a failing grade. 

Typically, I don't look for or read movie reviews before I see them – especially for movies I'm looking forward to seeing. Reviews affect my own opinions: Once I read them, I can't forget what was said while I'm watching the movie. In the case of The Professor, the reviews found me and most of them were bad. The sentiment was so universal that the movie was never properly released in theaters in the United States. Instead, it went straight to DVD in 2019. 

I only read a couple of these bad reviews before I decided to deduce the opinions from just the headlines. Some reviewers made the unfair comparison of Richard's behavior to Johnny's own, so I stopped reading and waited to see this thing for myself. 

I see what they mean, but...

Maybe it was because of the reviews, but I didn't like The Professor at first. He and his wife are so mean to each other. He is bad at his job and doesn't care. He's a bad influence on his students. He's making bad choices. Is this really what people think Johnny is doing in his own life? How dismal. 

What I find so jarring is that Richard's choices of how to spend the rest of his days are so different from what I would think to do, but that's probably the point. Anyone who finds out that they are going to die soon probably assumes that they should do whatever they feel like doing in the moment. In Richard's case, that includes drugs, infidelity, and a bender in the middle of the week. 

...The Professor has some good points.

I warmed up to The Professor because there are also moments of reflection, clarity and purpose. In fact, it made me cry by the end, which has got to mean something. 

Like most Johnny movies, The Professor has a great beginning. In the opening scene, Richard is in the doctor's office getting the bad news – a terminal diagnosis and only a few months to live. For the next few minutes that span the rest of his day, the news sinks in and Richard is lost in thought about what it means. Johnny is so good at saying so much without saying anything, but Richard shares his distress and anger every once in a while with a single repeated curse word, expressed in a variety of ways. It's both funny and sad.

I also love the elements that glue this movie together – the structure and soundtrack, the cinematography and scenery, and the script and cast. 

• 
  The Professor is divided into chapters that reflect Richard's thought process: For example, Chapter 1 is I Have Something To Say and Chapter 3 is I'm Really Going to Die. I like how these titles set the tone for the next scenes. 
• Also setting the tone is a great soundtrack that includes refreshing classical and comforting Motown. 
• Filmed in Vancouver, The Professor is full of beautiful shots, highlighting impressive architecture, sets, and scenery that makes me want to plan a vacation there. Given the grim start and Richard's resulting irreverence, I appreciate having something pretty to look at. 
• Unorthodox behavior aside, Richard offers plenty of worthwhile lessons about not letting life pass by unnoticed. 
• 
  This great cast, including Rosemarie DeWitt, Danny Houston, Odessa Young, and Zoey Deutch, seem wholly invested in capturing the balance between life and death, and it's clear that they are having fun doing it. "Johnny's just so alive and present and real in every moment," says Devon Terrell (who plays student Danny). "It's so brilliant to be in a scene with someone who is so kind of almost animalistic in a way that something's going to happen in every moment. You just didn't know what."

I love seeing the relationship between Richard and his best friend Peter (Danny Houston). Danny Houston's performance is my favorite in this movie, maybe because I would likely react the same way to the news of a friend's (or Johnny's) impending death. Apparently, the feeling was mutual: "My experience with Johnny was love at first sight," Danny Houston says. "I don't know if we're playing into what's required for the characters of the piece or whether it's truly heartfelt, but at the moment, it feels absolutely real." I also related to Richard's bond with his daughter Olivia (Odessa Young). In the end, their goodbye is what brought me to tears. (The original title of this movie was Richard Says Goodbye, which makes more sense to me.) 

I'm not sure The Professor deserves all the bad reviews it got. Sometimes, it lays it on thick that life should not be wasted, but is that such a bad message? The humor might be lost on some people because of the seriousness of this subject, but I appreciate the attempt to take the sting out of death. The Professor suggests that we should not be afraid of death but let it help us focus on a well-lived life, there is no time like the present to make changes and do what we need to do, and when the time comes, we should go out however we want. These are themes Johnny has always seemed to live by, so I'm not surprised that he connected to this character. This story may have struck close to home too: The Professor is dedicated to Johnny's mom, who died of lung cancer in 2016.  

The Kitties get it. 

When thinking of how The Kitties could represent The Professor, one scene kept coming back to me. Most of the movie shows Richard indulging in his vices, telling people what he really thinks, imparting words of wisdom to his students, or saying goodbye to those he loves. But in this scene, Richard is alone, dealing with his own thoughts and pain. Maybe I'm reading too much into this moment, but it seems like Richard is realizing that this is really happening, that it's out of his control, and it's something bigger than everything else. He looks up toward the sky, as church bells toll in the background, and it cuts to Chapter 4, titled, It's Really Starting to Kick In. Maybe I'm not too far off. 

I was also struck by the interesting stark angles and textures in this shot of someone huddled in a space with jagged rock, aged wood, and hard tile. It's an uncomfortable but pretty space. 

What's next? 

In Waiting for the Barbarians, Johnny plays a colonel who doesn't have to say much to instill fear in innocent people, waving his misguided authority around with a fancy golden hammer. 

All film images © Global Road Entertainment; illustration © Melissa Connolly