Hot Docs 2023: Undertaker for Life!

Georges Hannan’s Undertaker for Life! begins with a tongue-in-cheek confession. A 22-year-old man talks about being scared to tell his family his choice to become a mortician, as if there was nothing more shameful he could tell them. The brief film that follows, running only 52 minutes, attempts to shed light on this profession that most of us would rather not think about because it’s a profession all about death. Death is uncomfortable and our current culture in particular shies away from it at every opportunity. However, this documentary leans into the discomfort and showcases the work of those individuals who commit their lives to sorting through death. 

Undertaker for Life! jumps between various morticians of different faiths and economic backgrounds to gain insight into this odd job. Most of the film consists of talking heads of the interviewees, interspersed with observational moments following them in their work. A tongue-in-cheek spirit animates these interludes and the film’s coy framing. For instance, when we hear about the process of embalming, we watch one of the morticians changing the oil on his hearse. The visual symbolism is obvious, but such gallows humour also underlines a fatal shortcoming of the film. 

Undertaker for Life! wants to expose the uncomfortable truths of the death business, but it’s remarkably non-confrontational and avoids investigating death directly. The filmmakers interview morticians and those in the funeral business, but we are shown no dead bodies, no bereaved families, no visceral reminders of what awaits us all at the end of our life’s journey. The film gives a behind-the-scenes look at odd jobs in the funeral business, from casket-making to arranging flowers to mowing lawns in graveyards, but it never directly connects these things to the uncomfortable but universal experience of dealing with the dead directly. Perhaps the filmmakers thought such an approach would be grotesque. Perhaps they thought filming such a process would be rude to the deceased. But for a movie that constantly comes back to the notion that modern people want to avoid staring death in the face, the film itself displays a similar squeamishness.

In a weirdly fitting way, it does what morticians do by embalming bodies: try to keep death out of the frame. The flowers, the beautiful coffins, the solemn music, the hors d'oeuvres, the make-up, the best suit or dress, the whole embalming process is meant to make the dead look presentable and almost-alive, which helps people in the mourning process remember the person they mourn as opposed to focus on the corpse they are. But that means that all we’re left with in Undertaker for Life! are interviews with morticians, which can be funny or insightful or mordant, but rarely provocative.

Talking about death is uncomfortable. Making a film about death is uncomfortable. The gallows humour approach is a coping mechanism. It’s too bad this documentary that attempts to lift the veil on the business of death is coping in its own way.

4 out of 10

Undertaker for Life! (2022, Canada)

Directed by Georges Hannan.

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