The lyrics celebrate the ethos of the coffin club, but pull no
punches when it comes to the funeral industry and “the price of
a stupid wooden box”. It’s joyful, defiant and surprisingly moving,
perhaps because our cultural aversion to embracing death, and our
propensity to compartmentalise deep-seated emotions, mean that
we struggle to hold big, conflicting feelings in a single moment – the
“long, deep sob of that mysterious, wondrous happiness that is one
with pain”, as Victorian novelist George Elliot puts it.
So, how exactly did Briar turn a story about death preparation
into an all-singing, all-dancing, razzle-dazzle musical? She
admits that at the outset, she had no idea how she was going
to tackle it. Despite being an experienced, award-winning
documentary filmmaker, Briar had never made a comedy, nor
a musical, before. So she started out as she usually would:
researching, recording interviews to camera, transcribing. It was
heavy-going, with page after page of transcripts and only three
minutes of screen time all up.“I realised I was overcomplicating things,” she says. “In the end,
the key themes came through: that the club was about community,
and that death and dying could be a celebratory thing.” So, the
lyricist got busy, the song was written, and then came showtime.
“I’d never had an experience like that before,” Briar says. “We were
asking people to learn new skills like singing and dancing, and at
some points it was actually scary, because I was worried about
their wellbeing. We ended up filming long, 12-hour days in a very
cold warehouse space, and some of these people are quite elderly.”
But, as it turned out, they threw themselves in, learning lyrics and
dance steps with gusto.
For Briar, making the film was a profound experience. “It made me
think about my own death, and that of my parents, in a way thatI was afraid to really do before. Some of the fear was taken away.”
She recounts meeting a feisty centenarian called Ynys who still
lived independently at home. “Honestly, to this day, I’ve never met
anyone quite like her,” Briar smiles. “She was very frail, but she
encouraged me to interview her in her bed, and the whole time she
was laughing, saying, ‘I love life so much!’ She’d give me all these
titbits of wisdom about life and how wonderful it was. I guess, when
you’re that age, you reach an understanding of what really matters.”Briar was also struck by the importance of connecting with
others and giving back to your community, no matter your age.
“I realised how much this club transforms people’s lives,” she
says. “When you’re an active member, you turn up once a week;
you make your own coffin; you build relationships with other
people and visit them when they’re sick. But then people keep
coming back, and they make coffins for families who can’t afford
them.” In a low socio-economic area like Rotorua, there’s high
demand for affordable caskets. The average box costs around
$2000; the coffin club makes them for $350. They also make and
donate baby coffins to the local hospital.Briar is familiar with the ethically messy terrain of factual
storytelling. Of recording and reconstructing stories entrusted to
you – handling them with care, weaving them together in a way
that holds truth, but also resonates. And she knew at the outset of
this project that asking people to step so far out of their comfort
zones was going to be a challenge. “I’ve made lots of films, and
I’ve been in situations where you do feel like you’re taking a lot
from people,” she says. “But with this film, it was very different.
I felt like, even though we were asking them to do a lot – learning
dance routines and songs – that experience really gave them
something. It was amazing.”Photo
Mark Lapwood
our project