Film
The Undertaking
- Slow-burning
Thomas Lynch is an undertaker and poet—a rare duality that lets him speak with startling clarity about death, grief, and what it means to witness people at their most vulnerable. This is a quiet, unhurried film about a man who has thought deeply about mortality, and it asks you to do the same. For anyone curious about how we die, how we mourn, or simply how to live better.
Should you watch it?
Watch it if you are drawn to quiet portraits of ordinary work, where a man talks frankly and tenderly about mortality and the rituals people build around the dead.
Skip it if you need brisk pacing or a plot to follow, since this is a slow, reflective profile that stays with one man's voice and rarely hurries anywhere.
What it asks of you: Sixty minutes, unhurried and reflective, with room for silence and for a subject that sits close to mortality. Come ready to listen rather than be entertained.
Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.
If you liked this
O.J.: Made in America2016
A masterclass in documentary storytelling that builds something enormous from careful attention to detail, context, and the human cost of events.
But Entirely different subject matter; five hours long. The connection is structural, not thematic.
The Witness2015
Examines how we live morally and witness difficult things, anchored in one person's decision to look rather than look away.
But Much more explicitly political and confrontational than The Undertaking.
Cameraperson2016
A director reflects on decades of filming, exploring what it means to witness trauma, suffering, and beauty. Meditative and genuinely moving.
But Fragmented and personal to the filmmaker; not everyone connects with that kind of essayistic approach.
Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from The Undertaking
The wildcard
Something you would not have found on your own.
Synecdoche, New York2008
Both grapple with how art and labour help us process mortality. Lynch works in wood and words; this film is about building meaning from ruins.
A film that becomes increasingly concerned with mortality, meaning-making, and the labour of witness as a man constructs an enormous simulacrum of life. Baroque and strange but searching.
But Deliberately confusing and self-conscious; blurs reality and art in ways that frustrate many viewers. Requires tolerance for ambiguity and pretension.
More like this (2)
Man with a Movie Camera1929
A silent experimental film about urban life that finds poetry and profundity in witnessing ordinary moments and the cycle of living.
But Nearly a century old, formally experimental, and entirely without dialogue or traditional narrative structure.
The Death of Louis XIV2016
Both find unexpected beauty and wisdom in death itself rather than sentiment around it. Both trust their subject and their audience's patience.
Albert Serra's film is forty minutes of a king dying in his bedroom, filmed like a religious tableau. Extraordinarily still, strange, and profound about the absolute ordinariness of the end.
But Genuinely difficult to watch—almost static, long takes, more sound than image. Requires active surrender rather than passive viewing.
People
Directing
- Karen O'ConnorDirector
- Miri NavaskyDirector
Writing
- Karen O'ConnorWriter
- Miri NavaskyWriter