Every once in a while I will see a documentary that will totally yank my mind out of my “American doc headspace.” I’m about to make a gross generalization, but here goes. The majority of American docs pay relatively little attention to form, beauty, lyricism, and cinematic structure. Most focus on the information, the content, the message, the story, the characters, the narrative, etc. All of these things are important. And I have seen amazing and wonderful docs that master all of the above and leave me thinking “what an amazing film.” But when I see a film such as Heddy Honigmann’s Forever, as I did Friday night at Hot Docs International Docmentary Festival in Toronto, I am pulled back into a world in which documentaries can be every bit as mysterious and emotionally nuanced as a fiction film, a great piece of music, or a painting.

In Forever, Honigmann visits the famous Père-Lachaise cemetery in Paris, resting place to Proust, Chopin, and Jim Morrison among others. She explores the cemetery through conversations with its living visitors: a Spanish woman who fled Franco’s Spain 50 years ago and now visits her husband’s grave daily, a South Korean student who has traveled to Paris just to visit Proust and present him with cookies, and an embalmer who prepares the faces of the dead for their last encounters with the living. Honigmann, a Dutchwoman who won a lifetime achievement award at Hot Docs this year, moves through these encounters with gentle questions, a patient camera, and a musical pacing that gives the viewer time to ponder the questions she puts forth.

She includes her own questions in the film and makes no attempt at invisibility. Nor should she; her respect for and curiosity about her characters add another layer of depth to the way the viewer experiences each of them. There were a few particularly striking moments. She asks the embalmer what the hardest part of his job is.  He struggles silently for about 10 seconds to come up with the right words. The pause is pregnant and loving. So few filmmakers would allow a character so much time to answer, but would rather step in and prod. The hardest part, he says, is wanting to give the families of the deceased what they want, but knowing that he can never give them what they really want, which is to bring their loved one back to life.

At the film’s closing, a young pianist who has visited Chopin’s grave is seen giving a recital. As she plays a Chopin piece, the camera stays in a close up of her face the whole time, with only a brief cutaway to her fingers on the keys of the piano. We spend the final five minutes of the film watching the face of this girl, who is obsessed with Chopin because her father, who died of “overwork,” loved his music. It is an unexpected and welcome opportunity to linger in an observational state and let the images wash over you. Honigmann’s eye for the world around her is curious, lingering and drunk with a desire to watch and listen. Going along for the ride with her pulls the viewer into a dreamlike conversation about death, art and love. And into a world in which documentaries exist right alongside a Proust novel or a Chopin sonata.