OBIT
A documentary on the
obituary department of the New York Times hardly seems the sort of thing that
would shake the walls of the multiplexes, but the new movie Obit deserves some of the same attention
and praise lavished on the latest computer assisted adventures of the latest
comic book superhero. Despite its
ostensibly unpromising subject, the movie provides a fascinating glimpse into
the daily workings of the department, its people, and their conception of their
job.
Proceeding in the tried
and true technique of contemporary documentary (though here generally justified
by the subject), the director employs a series of talking head interviews with
the several writers in the department, who describe the challenges of the job,
their methods, and their attitudes toward dealing with death. The director, Vanessa Gould, also interrupts the
narrative with old newspaper headlines and articles—the Times morgue keeper,
incidentally, deserves his own film—photographs, and film clips showing moments
from the lives of the people the writers memorialize. The ongoing montage enlivens the story, but
also suggests some of the meaning and importance of those lives, in short, the
reasons for their deaths receiving a full article in that section of the
revered New York Times.
She also follows the day-long progress of one writer,
Bruce Weber, on the obituary of someone most people probably never heard of, William
Wilson, the first person to serve as the television consultant for a
presidential campaign. After calling the
widow for the essential information that the Times demands—cause of death, age,
survivors, etc.—he starts the process of research and writing, not all that
different from any scholar’s work. The
investigation opens up a window on the past, showing clips of the first
presidential debate, the historic confrontation of John F. Kennedy and Richard
Nixon, orchestrated largely by Wilson; that debate, Kennedy claimed, won him
the election.
Weber begins the day on the telephone, proceeds
through research on his subject, and finishes a long and satisfactory essay
just in time to meet his deadline in the late afternoon. Like any writer, he stalls and stumbles,
tries several beginnings, overcomes an array of familiar obstacles, and ends
with a work he happily regards as successful.
As he and his colleagues point out, they write a kind of history in
uncovering the lives of people who achieved enough to earn an obituary in the
newspaper. They not only record the
lives of the famous and distinguished, however, they also often remember the
forgotten, those who have slipped away from fame, dropped out of the public
gaze, reminding us all that for both the celebrated and the obscure the paths
of glory lead but to the grave.
Inevitably, the writers also find that their work
brings them into a consideration of death, of their own ends, intimations of
their own mortality. In the process of
recording the lives of so many so often, they inevitably confront the notion of
the obituary that awaits each of them.
Like Prospero at the end of The
Tempest they realize that “every third thought shall be (their) grave.” Obit
may remind us all of that reality.
