Dying (Sterben) [2024]

 Matthias Glasner, in his first theatrical release in 12 years, made his two key influences amply clear through a poster of Jarmusch’s Stranger Than Paradise and clippings from Bergman’s Fanny and Alexander, alongside a wry quip on the latter masterwork’s questionable suitability for Christmas viewings. Dying, therefore, was a movie awash as much with bleak meditations on mortality and troubled familial dynamics as with ironic and darkly funny portrayals of these weighty issues. The film’s seemingly depressive title, consequently, was a demonstration of the director’s sardonic sense of humour. Further, while the 3-hour runtime might appear a daunting proposition, it’s narrative brilliance, marvellously etched characters, nuanced depictions of messy complications, and meticulous balancing between crushing seriousness and deadpan levity made this a sharply observed, brutally unsentimental and thoroughly engrossing watch. The exceptionally dysfunctional Lunies family was at the heart of this grand soap opera, and it comprised of Tom (Lars Eidinger) – a composed but heavily stressed conductor who’s rehearsing the titular musical composition by his volatile friend Bernard (Robert Gwisdek) and playing surrogate dad to his ex-wife Liv’s (Anna Bederke) infant daughter –; his emotionally wrecked siter Ellen (Lilith Stangenberg) – a full-blown alcoholic who loves singing and is having an injurious affair with a married colleague ((Ronald Zehrfeld) –; and their aged parents, viz. Lissy (Corinna Harfouch), the cancer-afflicted and music-loving mother, and Gerd (Hans-Uwe Bauer), whose disintegration on account of Parkinson’s disease was heartbreaking to watch. All actors were terrific in this work set over five loosely overlapping episodes with shifting POVs, and two of its scenes – a catastrophic orchestral performance and a searingly candid mother-son conversation – underscored the film’s glorious interplay between high tragedy and low comedy.

Director: Matthias Glasner

Genre: Family Drama/Black Comedy/Ensemble Film

Language: German

Country: Germany