Dying
Germany’s Matthias Glasner cleverly blends the tragic and the humorous in a sustained family drama, but then loses control of its tone.
Lilith Stangenberg
Image courtesy of Picturehouse Entertainment.
To call your film Dying is surely a hostage to fortune and all the more so when the work in question lasts for just over three hours. But unexpectedly the length of this piece written and directed by Matthias Glasner was not the source of the problem that I had with it. Although not so well known internationally, Glasner, who was born in Hamburg in 1965, is well established in his own country both as a creator of films for the cinema and for substantial work done for television. That experience ensures that he has developed the expertise to keep Dying constantly on the move thus preventing any of its sequences from dragging. That is a remarkable achievement but what he has failed to do is to create a work which maintains the tone which it establishes early on, a highly skilled balance in which what might have been a gloomy drama is lightened but not falsified by an acute awareness of life’s absurdities which provide much humour.
Dying is a family tale set out in five chapters and an epilogue. The older generation is represented by a couple both suffering from ill health. She is Lissy Lunies (Corinna Harfouch) and it is her name that provides the title for the first chapter although here her husband, Gerd (Hans-Uwe Bauer), plays a hardly less significant role. The second chapter, ‘Tom Lunies’, sees things from the viewpoint of their son (Lars Eidinger) who is a successful conductor currently rehearsing a new composition for choir and orchestra by his old friend Bernard (Robert Gwisdek), this work being a piece entitled ‘Dying'. For the third chapter we turn to Tom's sister, Ellen (Lilith Stangenberg), whose life has turned out much less well since she has become someone who drinks far too much. Just after we meet her, she starts an affair with her boss, a dentist named Sebastian Vogel (Ronald Zehrfeld), but, although he becomes serious about her, it turns out that he is already married and that this relationship will not turn her life around.
The situations set up in these first chapters named for the main characters are then further developed, the fourth being entitled ‘The Thin Line’ (a reference to what Bernard is hoping to achieve in his music) and the fifth ‘Love’. Although the later stages of the film follow through in chronological order, the first half of Dying covers more or less a single period of time but presents it in turn from the viewpoints of Lissy, Tom and Ellen. A few scenes actually replay so that, for example, a telephone conversation in chapter one shows us Lissy in conversation with Tom who is unseen and later on in chapter two the same phone call comes up again but now with Tom on the screen and Lissy a voice on the line. It is a structure that puts one in mind of a classic four-part British TV drama from the 1960s, Talking to a Stranger by John Hopkins, and that work is further echoed in what is the finest scene in Dying. Here we find Tom and Lissy talking face-to-face and going deep into their feelings about each other, some aspects of which are openly acknowledged for the first time.
If this conversational exchange provides a scene in which the drama excludes any lighter touches, what has preceded it is notable for the many instances in which the tone incorporates sardonic or ironic humour. This element is splendidly illustrated very early on when Lissy and her husband Gerd are visited by officials who, as providers of health resources, follow rules that prevent them from giving the help that is needed. That Dying never plays down the harsh realities that old age can bring is vividly illustrated by the fact that Gerd is suffering from Parkinson's and from dementia and often wanders off only partially clothed and exposing himself while Lissy’s first appearance finds her on the floor lying in her own excrement. All of this is established just before the officials arrive and the subsequent humour, which is never at the expense of these family members, is perfectly judged. Thus, when Lissy is asked by the visitors how they are doing, she simply replies: "Not doing so well at the moment". Similarly, much later in a scene at a forest cemetery following a death the official address is just getting under way when a phone goes off – it is Tom explaining why he has been delayed.
What is so adept here is the care taken to ensure that the comic details are convincingly realistic and thus fit in with the serious issues that are in play. The latter extend (still with humorous touches incorporated) to another aspect of Tom's life. This concerns his continuing involvement with a former girlfriend, Liv (Anna Bederke), who has become pregnant despite being at odds with her present partner, Moritz (Nico Holonics). It's a situation in which Tom’s role makes him closer than Moritz himself to the baby that is born. But, just when the balance seems impressively secure, Glasner’s film moves into chapter three and in telling Ellen’s story opts to turn her relationship with Sebastian into scenes so comically exaggerated that they can only be regarded as farce. This is absolutely apparent in a scene about a tooth extraction and is further confirmed when other crisis moments arise when an actual patient is in the chair.
Although Dying has won awards including three at the 2024 Berlin Film Festival, I found this switch in tone disastrous. It is bad enough when it happens, but in addition to credibility being lost here it also casts a shadow over what follows since one is now disinclined to believe it. A scene at the premiere of Bernard's composition when a cough disturbs the performance is so overplayed that it takes us back into that realm of farce. Thereafter the film includes a scene in which the depressive Bernard acts in a way that causes Tom to declare "This can't be happening”. Earlier that might have been an effective comic line, but at this stage in the proceedings we can only feel that Tom’s observation is all too true. In fact, it is vital to the film that credibility should be sustained because what happens late on ties in very much with the coldness in Tom's character which is a major concern of the drama unfolding. Furthermore, the film which daringly takes time to incorporate much of Bernard’s composition as an expression of its own themes uses that work at the end of chapter five to provide a climax that is intended to move us. But, despite fine acting all around, I had by then long since ceased to believe in the story being told. The film's ultimate failure is all the sadder because Dying clearly meant much to Matthias Glasner who adds at the close a written dedication: "For my family the living and the dead".
Original title: Sterben.
MANSEL STIMPSON
Cast: Lars Eidinger, Corinna Harfouch, Lilith Stangenberg, Hans-Uwe Bauer, Ronald Zehrfeld, Robert Gwisdek, Anna Bederke, Saskia Rosendahl, Nico Holonics, Catherine Stoyan, Saerom Park.
Dir Matthias Glasner, Pro Jan Krüger, Ulf Israel and Matthias Glasner, Screenplay Matthias Glasner, Ph Jakub Bejnarowicz, Pro Des Tamo Kunz, Ed Heike Gnida, Music Lorenz Dangel, Costumes Sabine Keller.
Port au Prince Film & Kultur Produktion/Senator Film Produktion/Schwarzweiss Filmproduktion/Arte/ZDF-Picturehouse Entertainment.
182 mins. Germany. 2024. UK Rel: 25 July 2025. Cert. 18.
