Reviews

Movie Review: Dying

Screening as part of the European Film Festival between 10-20 October 2024.

One-liner: An evocative, haunting and powerful family portrait drama compelled by excellent performances.

Dying is a coming-to-terms drama from writer-director Matthias Glasner about a family who must contend with the prospect of their parents passing. Both parents are struggling to get by and navigating the imminent culmination of their lives far from their children. The estranged Lunies family must confront their demons, make startling confessions and come to terms with the next chapter. We are all essentially dying from the day we are born, and this melancholic drama grapples with the idea of mortality through a spectrum of disparate emotions and desperate circumstances.

While it starts with a focus on the parents and their declining health, the family portrait’s compartmenalised into chapters with son and daughter eventually taking centrestage. The outpouring of their difficult upbringing, effects of being raised in this home and how that’s played out in their lives serves as a thoughtful reflection. The impermanence of life and seemingly apathetic response to their parents becomes an outworking for the characters and how they respond to love, life and death.

Lars Eidinger has a fascinating face, taking the slings and arrows in his stride as Tom Lunies. Lilith Stangenberg is just as forthright as Ellen Lunies, capturing an untamed and self-combustive spirit. Getting the wrecking ball rolling is Corinna Harfouch, who brings the saga down to earth with the realities of relying on the state and trying to contend with self-care.

Tom is a conductor, who has reached the ceiling of his career. He contends with an ex-girlfriend wanting him to serve as a father figure, a composer colleague who is suicidal, and a lover in his life who he can’t fully commit to. Grappling with all these strands that make up his life, Tom’s forced to wrestle with some of the issues and matters that may have sent him on this path. Difficult conversations and slow-boiling tension in the way he relates to others speaks to the possible dysfunction of his family situation with the conductor not having any truly solid relationships to show for his many years of being.

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“So, tell me about my childhood.”

Then his sister Ellen is a dental assistant with an alcohol dependency. There’s a dark comedic element at play when it comes to Ellen, who finds herself trying to balance work and play as she begins a passionate affair with her boss, offering a comedic slant to offset the drama of her brother’s bittersweet predicament. There’s also an inherent melancholy to the dysfunction and disillusion she’s experiencing, pointing to a number of factors that could have derailed her.

While the subject matter is sombre and given due seriousness, this doesn’t mean that the film is a drag. Adopting a similar experimental temperament to The Square, there are several memorable scenes that push the limits, test relationships and even social etiquette. From devastating to prickly, these beautifully curated moments have a raw and rich emotional power.

Being a conductor, there are obvious similarities with As It Is in Heaven. The most notable aspect is the excellent performances, which root you in the moment as these engaging and powerful scenes play out. Taken from a conductor’s perspective primarily, this also means that the music has an important role, with an organically embedded score, creating vivid dramatic moments and memorable scenes. The three-hour runtime seems daunting but is much more manageable with such strong performances and a compelling story about family, relationships and legacy.

There’s much to appreciate in Matthias Glasner’s finely crafted film, moving from exciting borderline action sequences involving makeshift dentistry to brutally honest dialogue between two people around a table. There’s a slow-boiling tension and to Dying and the North German culture adds another layer to this film, taking a more matter-of-fact approach. This cool detachment can be on-the-nose and even comedic, cutting through any unnecessary melodrama.

Dying takes you places with an artful temperament and true pulse. While the actors are relatively unknown, there’s an honesty and truth to their full-fledged performances. Glasner’s family portrait draws us in for its most powerful moments without coming across as too manufactured or contrived. Ambitious in scope, simply being able to pull off a three-hour runtime as drama is an achievement in and of itself.

Starting with hand-painted opening credits, Dying is an entertaining, suspenseful and substantial film that brings the best of art house cinema into what becomes an epic and haunting drama. A nod to some of the greatest film-makers, Dying is ultimately an original, contemplative and grand ode to the beauty and ugliness of life and death.

The bottom line: Powerful

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