The Sacrifice
the matrix
Ordet
Silent and contemplative would be mandatory. Something by Nathaniel Dorsky would be appropriate. The Visitation or Threnody.
First, I guess I’m the only one who questions the premise: Since when do people play movies at funerals?! :-)
If this somehow became the prevailing custom (as opposed to playing music or decorating with flowers), I wouldn’t want to ask people to sit through an entire feature film. Instead, I’d have them show just the opening and funeral scene of THE BIG CHILL (1983).
For those of you who know it, after all the friends are assembled in a church, a pianist proceeds to play the song that the deceased had requested: “You Can’t Always Get What You Want.” :-) The wry smile of recognition on Jeff Goldblum’s face is worth the price of admission, even if he hams it up a bit thereafter.
Near Death (1989) by Frederick Wiseman.
My funeral is going to be my body getting shoved out of a plane and detonated into pieces over New York City, after which a lottery will be held the next day so that for each cubic centimeter (Americans need to learn metric damn it!) of my ‘sploded meats brought in, $100 will be awarded after genetic testing proves it’s me (because knowing people, once they “reassemble” my body I promise you I’ll have sprouted extra limbs and gained a couple-three hundred pounds after a “lottery” like THIS).
Anyway my point is, there won’t be time for a movie, and anyway, at what venue?!?
—PolarisDiB
What? You couldn’t chose a short film for the inflight movie before detonation time? Maybe a Coyote and Roadrunner cartoon since they have some of the same explosive content your funeral would be noted for.
By the way, I hope you have some trustworthy relatives and friends lest they try to game the system and rip off pieces of you before hand.
Hey, I have no problem with post-mortem nespotism on my family’s part—it’s a dog-eat-dog world (Or, dog eat DiB-flesh world), people’s gotta WORK for their cash, and my family has to be canny and devious to keep up!
And perhaps you’re right, nothing would make me more giddy than Looney Tunes played in-flight of my funeral. That waskally wabbit!
—PolarisDiB
I hope i don’t ever have to die. But i may be in the last generation of inevitable mortality, which bugs and frightens me quite a bit. It means the world could become a more dangerous violent place. Perhaps a cheerful little short like Tak Tic by Boddendijk (see youtube) might do.
Kenji > I may be in the last generation of inevitable mortality…
How so? Do you know something the rest of us don’t?
I see ever lengthening life expectancy and medical advances prolonging that still further, rejuvenating ops, transplants, drugs etc- and the longer people survive the longer they are likely to benefit. There is going to be a massive problem with the wealth divide, not just between poor and rich throughout the world but a matter of life and death.
If death is no longer inevitable i wonder how religions and attitudes to the after life will fare
We have a long way to go. We have to map the genome first. Then perfect cloning. Then there’s the problem of memories: without the ability to carry one’s memory across the genetic divide, you won’t really be you. If and when all this occurs what a nightmare that will be. I don’t doubt that people will attempt to manipulate science in order to prolong life. The wealthy will naturally exploit all manner of scientific experimentation to their advantage, with wildly varying degrees of success, to insure that they do. About a century or two down the road, this world is going to be a scary place.
Kenji and KJ’s posts above remind me of the closed-off society in ZARDOZ, where death has been abolished and people don’t age — unless a court convicts them of something and then they have to walk around looking older than their fellow citizens.In that film, the elimination of death is seen as a negative, the renunciation of the natural life (and death) cycle.
Andrei Roublev for quite a long funeral.
Oh, I don’t know… Last Year At Marienbad. Pretty much sums up what it would be like to be dead.
Either Cinema Paradiso (Because it is my #1), or 8 1/2 if I end up being an accomplished film director like I hope.
Part of my film will
Jerry Bruckheimer sells my sole to the devil- The Devil and Daniel Webster
Die in France from the result of a Hallucination- Once Upon a Time in the West
Overdose from LSD- Hal Ashby’s entire career
Die in a marathon- Slumdog Millionaire
Die from explosion result of a volcano- Platoon
Denis Quiad stares me to death- Friday Night Lights
Wow I’m out of idea’s… part 3 coming soon…
Tarkovsky’s Andrei Roublev for a very long funeral.
I would never forgive the dead person or the dead person’s relatives who made me sit through a fucking movie at the funeral. If you can convince me to go, which is rare, I want to be in and out of there.
Harold & Maude.
I’d want them to prop the coffin up and show Duck Soup.
Planet Terror :D
La Double /vie de Veronique – but just the scene where Weronika … you know………
Clerks, with the original Dante getting robbed and killed ending
A ghost comedy, like an halloween for children: Beetlejuice, Ghosbusters, Corpse Bride, Frighteners.
Or I would go for a medley of my top 20 favourite movies.
There would be a top hat on a table near the coffin. Inside the hat, folded pieces of paper would be chosen at random. They would have things written on them like…
“Any movie with Christopher Walken”
“A Woody Allen Drama”
“Any Oliver Stone movie before 1995”
“High Fidelity”
“The Big Lebowski”
“Smokey and the Bandit”
…The hat thing would be a nice visual metaphor for my belief in chance and a random universe.
“Synecdoche, New York” definitely…
And just after that one a “Shaun Of The Dead” + Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” combo (special version of Shaun Of The Dead with music and dancing zombies scenes from Thriller intertwined)
Hmm, probably The Time of the Wolf, Hannah and Her Sisters, and Radio Days for sure.
Probably would be others, but that’s just off the top of my head.
bellwhether
Under The Volcano- Only cuz I will probably die of substance abuse. LOL