Don`t Die: The Man Who Wants To Live Forever

Anyone who has ever navigated the thorny labyrinth of the American healthcare system has probably puzzled what it'd be want to throw reputedly infinite assets and time at now no longer handiest the diagnostic headaches of illness, however additionally preventative self-care. Documentary Don`t Die: The Man Who Wants To Live Forever is avaialble to watch on Afdah movie.

Directed via way of means of Chris Smith, the movie makes a speciality of Bryan Johnson, a tech entrepreneur who has made it his life`s undertaking to goal the pesky biology of ageing. More amiable curio than hard-hitting social exploration, the end result is interesting if surface-skimming—a movie whose shortcomings aren't technical or creative, however as a substitute greater a feature of framing and philosophical engagement.

As the founder and CEO of Braintree, Johnson made his cash in cell and net price structures earlier than promoting his enterprise to PayPal in 2013. Since then, he has practiced undertaking capital funding even as reputedly devoting the overpowering quantity of his strength to, well, simply dwelling longer.

The car for his singleminded obsession is a thorough and surprisingly disciplined non-public anti-ageing software which he has dubbed “Project Blueprint.” Its goal is to gradual the tempo via way of means of which Johnson receives older and, theoretically, possibly even opposite maximum of the purposeful declines that go together with vintage age for everyone. With a vast, built-out infrastructure, this consists of the whole lot from diet, exercise, and loads of capsules consistent with day to greater contemporary and experimental treatments.

While the primary 15 mins of Don`t Die: The Man Who Wants To Live Forever indulge a dizzying quantity of wordy detail (why hello, inhaled lung senolytics and penis shockwave therapy!) in a whole lot the identical manner that businesspeople use a selected vernacular to make themselves sound smart, the ones fearing a complicated biology lesson needn`t fear. Don`t Die isn`t truly a wonky exercise, and normally pivots farfar from a whole lot of the precise technological know-how of Johnson`s regimen.

Instead, the film introduces Johnson`s teenage son, Talmage, who has reconnected together along with his father following a divorce. From there, it alights upon numerous factors of each Blueprint and its subject`s life, consisting of Johnson making public all of his fitness data, leveraging that open-ee-e book documentation for business purposes (“It`s now no longer technological know-how, it`s simply interest,” says one physician dismissively), inter-generational plasma therapy, and greater.

Smith first garnered interest together along with his 1996 debut, American Job, a pointy mockumentary that assayed the problems of minimum-salary life. But he truly made a touch with the Sundance-minted 1999 indie hit American Movie, which forged a sympathetic eye on an eccentric would-be filmmaker from Wisconsin. Smith has long past directly to have a numerous profession that, in latest years, has visible him following the cash path withinside the nonfiction realm, directing high-profile multi-episodic nonfiction initiatives.

While it lacks the vital similarity of a crook element, Don`t Die really stocks an awesome bit in not unusualplace with Smith`s four-component Bad Vegan, which acknowledged the bizarre downfall of New York vegan restauranteur and aspiring influencer Sarma Melngailis. In a macro sense, each tasks are testimonies of essentially sad and deeply ambivalent humans casting approximately for a person or some thing to provide their lives a bigger purpose.

Whereas Bad Vegan in no way pretty cracked the poised emotional aloofness of Melngailis, Don`t Die really does an admirable task of absolutely humanizing Johnson. In a global wherein billionaires often gift as clueless and socially broken, Johnson (a trifling millionaire four hundred instances over) has a fresh self-awareness. He talks brazenly of beyond intellectual fitness struggles and has a pleasant, self-effacing demeanor, even going to this point as to confess in kidding/now no longer kidding fashion, “This is a cult—to get you to visit mattress earlier.”

But the film remains, now no longer in contrast to Bad Vegan, commingled elements fascinating and frustrating. This is in massive degree due to the fact Smith doesn`t appear to absolutely comprehend Don`t Die`s diverse helping plotlines are really the gasoline using Johnson`s quixotic quest. Co-editors Daniel Koehler and Paul Trewartha frequently locate compelling factors of assessment and remark inside precise scenes, however many tale factors experience like they have to were pulled forward, to create a extra holistic portrait.

As packaged, Don`t Die looks like a group of discrete songs rather than an album with a extra cogent thematic throughline. For example, the participation of journalist Ashlee Vance (who additionally nets a manufacturer credit) lands as half-sketched, now no longer absolutely plumbing his knowledge withinside the tech area in a manner that would probably assist body Johnson`s pursuit as a part of a bigger fashion of wealthy guys setting their large wealth toward undertakings that study as poisonous combos of conceitedness mission and unasked-for social terraforming.