Body Work

Leaving out no details and even with a certain surgical crudeness, a group of those working in the profession which “makes its living from the dead” describe the stages which follow man’s final breath to the moment he is placed in the ground. Doctors, pathologists, embalmers and gravediggers dissect, in a perfectly matter-of-fact-way – and not without humour – one of the biggest taboo subjects of this century (perhaps the equivalent of what sex was to the last century). They tell us how they felt the first time, and what they want done with their bodies when they die. Certainly this is a disturbing film but praiseworthy in that it gives you the answers, in a down-to-earth way, to “all you wanted to know about dead bodies but were afraid to ask.”