Who typical German films imagines, often thinks of pretentious, artificial arthouse dramas or stupid humor à la Keinohrhasen or Fack ju Göhte. With Matthias Glasner’s Dying, a new work is now being shown in the cinema, which is not only three hours long, but also combines exactly these two genres. The result is a German film with several acting talents in top form, the likes of which have never been seen before.
German masterpiece now in the cinema: Don’t let the dying plot put you off
In his film, Glasner presents a family portrait that is divided into three chapters. Head Lissy (Corinna Harfouch) takes care of her severely demented husband Gerd (Hans-Uwe Bauer), even though she is herself suffering from diabetes, cancer, kidney failure and advanced blindness (!) is.
The adult son Tom (Lars Eidinger) is the conductor of a youth orchestra in Berlin and is rehearsing a symphony called Dying, which was written by his best friend and severely depressed artist Bernard (Robert Gwisdek). Tom is also raising the baby of his long-time ex-girlfriend Liv (Anna Bederke), who in turn doesn’t like the biological father.
The family’s other problem child is Tom’s sister Ellen (Lilith Stangenberg), who lives in Hamburg. She is an alcoholic dental assistant who plunges into an affair with her colleague Sebastian (Ronald Zehrfeld), who is (of course) married and has two children.
This all sounds like a leaden German family drama that stuffs every cliché a screenwriter could think of into a film. But dying is so much more.
The best German film of 2024 to date: Dying perfectly balances moving tragedy and brutal humor
Glasner’s film is not only extremely personal and sometimes painfully autobiographical, as Hans-Uwe’s character on the poster is referred to as “my father”. But Dying is a huge portrait of a dysfunctional family as shrill parody as it is sincere character study. The epic works both as a bizarre gag parade and as a thought-provoking meditation on the big themes of life, after which death awaits everyone.
Wild Bunch / Jakub Bejnarowicz, Port au Prince, Black and White, Senator 2024
Lilith Stangenberg in Dying
In some scenes you feel like you’re in a slapstick farce and you might think you’ve accidentally bought a cinema ticket for Chantal in Wonderland. But for every crazy scene, and Glasner’s film has countless of them, there is a deeply moving moment in Dying.
Then the camera accompanies the title, for example Death of a character for minutes in real timewhich few (especially German) filmmakers dare to do with such radicalism.
Dying is a film that combines the narrative ambition of Paul Thomas Anderson’s Magnolia with the sober unbearability of Michael Haneke’s love. And then honey in the head and full of normality! mixed underneath. He cleverly asks how much art has to bend in order to still appeal to an audience without losing its own value. And then puked all over the Berlin Philharmonic.
Dying has been going on since today, that April 25, 2024in German cinemas.