Review of A Certain Kind of Death (2003) by Stacie F — 10 Aug 2008

This is a superb documentary, not interested in probing its subjects (indeed no documentarian or film crew member is ever heard from) but instead settles to observe. The people interviewed seem to be allowed a free forum for their thoughts, like the director told them, "just do what you would normally do and help us understand what your job requires you to do".

"Faces of Death" can totally suck on it because this crew ALSO got LA county morgue access, and they got just as awesome footage as you guys did, cept it wasn't all heavy handed and laced with shock value like the FoD series. This is a film that shows what is - what a modern pauper's death and burial looks like, exactly. Not much sentimentality, just what we find out about the person from recovered legal forms or papers left in their houses. We first meet these people as decaying remains. The camera is not afraid of dead bodies, even extreme cases and bodies left to decay as long as most of these are usually much more severe to look at than other corpses. So there are many things here you may not want to see in our bubbled modern world, and that luxury is afforded to you because of the people who work for coroners and mortuaries. This movie shows us exactly what these jobs entail; the best example in the sequence in which bodies are prepared for cremation and then cremated. It's a beautiful naturalistic filming technique and the result is pure reality. This is what life, and death, are really like, and it may take a hell of a lot to watch this. But if you're a sick objective fuck like me, you're just going "those are some great shots of blood filled body bags" or "look at that...died on the shitter. Probably what'll happen to me. I better make some skydiving arrangements ASAP if I get bowel cancer instead of waiting around my shitty apartment and making mounds of 'gonna die' documents.".