Obit (Vanessa Gould) [Archive]

Stay Puft

04-03-2017, 08:14 AM

A day in the offices of the obit writers for the New York Times, and a look at the stories they write that day. Hour by hour (and through various tangents), we get a full sense of the work they do, their relationship and interaction with the newspaper and its other departments, and the political and aesthetic choices that they make individually as writers, and collectively as a journalistic department. I really enjoyed this; it's every bit as informative as it is entertaining. My favorite sections involve the massive media archive known as The Morgue, and its wonderfully jovial caretaker. There's a beautiful absurdity to the "advance obits" kept down there.

This is a film about death that ends up being about how to live. This is a film that finds art and philosophy in obituary columns. I'll admit, I had a tear in my eye at one point (I found the experience surprisingly cathartic, as it briefly deals with some of the major artist deaths of the last few years, in one particularly moving passage). Also, it's ridiculously funny. This is a film that also finds humor in death, and thank god (the final shot is an incredible punch line, and release valve, so I won't spoil it).

Oh, and the soundtrack sucks. I swear to god, I've heard background music like this in a thousand other documentaries.