‘It’s not for everyone. It’s a ministry to me.’ A funeral director on the business of death

The Last Man You Meet profiles Gregory B Levett, a third-generation funeral director in Georgia who has been in the business of dealing with death since he was 10. Guided by faith, compassion and his own brush with death, Levett finds great meaning and satisfaction in comforting others during difficult times, but admits that, ‘with all you see and do, you could go crazy’ in his line of work. The US director Chris Bone’s short documentary is at once polished and jarring, pairing elegant, sometimes reverent, shots of bodies in the mortuary with Levett’s thoughtful reflections, accrued over a lifetime spent face-to-face with a reality so many people try to avoid.