Der Weg nach Eden (1995) User Reviews

real faces of death

[trashgang · 6/10 · 1 October 2009]

First off all, it's unbelievable that the maker of this documentary was able to film dead people. I mean, they are really dead, no puppets, real persons. What we have here is a docu made around a man who has respect for the dead. The docu has an easy start, we start to know the doctor, the man who dissect the dead. It is filmed in Budapest, that is maybe the reason why they could make this movie. It's a Spanish docu so the subs are in Spanish, the docu was distributed in Germany so the narrator speaks German. if you don't understand German or Spanish then sometimes you will have a problem, but try to watch it. as said, it starts out easy, first we see dead people that the man has to dress for funeral and doing some make up of their face. So far no problem, but when to docu goes deeper into the subject of do we have a soul we go more and more into the real stuff. The dissection. And that really isn't for the faint of heart. First of he scalps the dead and removes the brains, afterwards he cut open the body, it's all shown before the camera. really, if you aren't ready for it don't watch it. And if you like to watch it, try to find yourself a copy, only available on VHS, good luck and RIP. This is the real face of death

Science and Death and Life

[snauth · 10/10 · 16 September 2005]

People die, every day, every minute, every second. People also die in movies, sometimes the body-count is one of the greatest assets of a movie. But what happens after we die? Here movies usually turn to the living. They mourn, they are shocked, they live on. This documentary is about the dead and about what happens to them after they die. Not in a metaphysical sense. No, it follows those, who handle the corpses, those, who 'post-process' them. Here, the topic of modern medicine enters the stage. Autopsy may not be the standard procedure, but it is a common phenomenon not only in the case of 'suspicious' deaths - as most movies want make us believe. There is another motive for autopsy: Order, science, and - in the case of the expert introduced in this documentary: mere craftsmanship. And here, besides the strong pictures of routines which are about taking apart corpses - the extraordinary quality of this movie lies: Respect for the death, respect for humanity can also express itself through bureaucratic regulations, which involve systematic mangling of bodies with knifes and scalpels. There is no black-and-white dualism between following of technical rules and the mystery of death. The truth is somewhere in-between or beyond.

Very beautiful and disturbing documentary about death and dissection.

[HumanoidOfFlesh · 9/10 · 3 February 2006]

"The Road to Eden" by Robert-Adrian Peyo is actually pretty reminiscent to Nacho Cerda's cult necro flick "Aftremath".It also deals with mortician,but this time it uses real corpses not special effects.János Keserü works as mortician and pathologist at a hospital in Budapest where elderly terminal patients are nursed.The law in Hungary states that the cause of death has to be established for every patient that dies.So all corpses have to be meticulously dissected, no appendage remains untouched.Keserü learned the skill of cutting up corpses(and sawing and drilling)from his father.He has worked with death all his life and that experience has led him to develop his own views on the transience of life.He is consumed by the question of the afterlife and how people can prepare for death.Pejo and his cameraman Wolfgang Lehner filmed the activities of Keserü as coolly and educationally as possible but the pictures they collected in this way are often more gruesome than shown in many splatter movies.Really this film is not for the easily offended.You have been warned!