Thought-provoking & challenging
Humanity has a finite time on this planet, and each of us will, at some point, face the inevitable end-result of death. Whether you believe in reincarnation, an after-life, waking up inside a simulation or any other myriad theories over what happens after death, the fact remains that we all have a limited time on this beautiful planet of ours.
When it comes to death, the topic is both fascinating and scary to face, but humanity has progressed leaps and bounds in this field since the 1840s. When you look at the median age of death over this time (at least for those in England and Wales), the average age has increased from the mid-40s to the mid 80’s as of 2020. Humanity has, in essence, managed to double the expected age span in this time, which brings up big questions over exactly where we, as a species, go from here – and whether that age will increase in a similar time-span.
With the oldest recorded person, Jeanne Calmet, living until the age of 122, there’s one man out there determined to smash that record and put himself in the history books as the man who defies aging and attempts to “live forever”. Or at least a lot longer than expected.
There’s no cryogenic freezing involved here though, but instead we get a very algorithmically driven health regime, a ton of pills, specific sleep patterns every night and cutting-edge experiments.
That man is a tech millionaire by the name of Bryan Johnson. After selling Venmo and funding his project, Blueprint, Bryan is on a mission to extend his life-span and slow the process of aging. Across the 90 minutes, we follow this man as he uses himself as a human guinea pig to smash through the current ideas around aging and death in order to live as optimally as possible.
The film explores Bryan’s regime every day, with meticulous detail around the number of pills he takes for various parts of his body. On top of that, we also get some archival footage from the past, exploring Bryan’s upbringing, his tumultuous relationship with religion, along with his desire to be the best dad possible to son Talmage.
There’s also a little bit of detail surrounding Bryan’s ugly split with his ex-wife Taryn, including a lawsuit with numerous allegations which he vehemently claims is all a fabrication.
A lot of this plays secondary to Bryan’s health journey though and with him spending around $2 million a year on this, his passion is of course dampened by critics the world over surrounding what he’s doing.
The documentary does a decent job of trying to remain unbiased here, with talking head interviews for those who are sceptical of what Bryan is doing along with his cheerleaders. There are also shots of YouTubers discussing what he’s doing, including a particularly damning assessment of his Olive Oil and Amazon Affiliate links across his website. Is Bryan Johnson just a snake oil salesman? Is all of this an elaborate ploy for another business venture?
Bryan is clearly a man who cares about his public persona too, and despite shrugging off comments from The Daily Mail and trending hashtags of Twitter/X, there’s definitely a desire here to be liked and for many to follow his journey.
Across the film we see Bryan set up YouTube shorts, watch the number of interactions on different posts like a hawk, and even track the number of impressions too. In fact, he even commented on the Netflix trailer on YouTube too!
All of this does make more sense later on when Bryan’s father speaks about how his son always admired Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism. It’s clear that Bryan has set up his health journey and Blueprint as the defining religion for himself and hopes that others can join him on this journey through the Don’t Die mantra. There’s a joke here about him being the next Jesus, and while humorous, there’s clearly a semblance of truth in this.
Of course, Bryan Johnson is no fool and he knows that what he’s doing is very much “out there” in the realm of science and health. There’s inevitably a lot here to scrutinise, and of course in this desire to try and live longer and optimize your body in the best way possible, are you simultaneously losing sight of the most important aspects of life? Bryan would argue no, given his ties with son Talmage, but we also see him struggling to connect with women or even get into dating.
It’s an interesting dilemma to ponder no doubt, and regardless of if you believe in what Johnson is doing or not, this documentary does offer a lot of food for thought when the credits roll.
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Verdict - 7/10
7/10