Dying

National stereotypes are rarely correct, and most stereotypes about Germans are no exception. No, Germans don’t face life (and death) with humourless efficiency. For proof, invest three hours of time in Sterben, premiering in Competition at the 2024 Berlinale. It’s not a comedy, although it’s deeply, darkly and ironically funny – and for a film that deals with death, it has an interesting, if subjective, sense of optimism (eventually).

Lissy Lunies (Corinna Harfouch) is first encountered slumped on the floor, covered in the results of her nocturnal incontinence. Her husband Gerd (Hans-Uwe Bauer) is entering the more advanced, wandering stages of dementia, and this is even more frustrating for Lissy than her own failing health. Their son Tom (Lars Eidinger) is preoccupied with co-parenting the baby his ex-girlfriend had with a subsequent lover, and daughter Ellen (Lilith Stangenberg) gets so drunk that she wanders too – waking up in Latvia. Can this dysfunctional family pull it together in their parental hour of need? Don’t bet on it.

It’s reductive to call Sterben a small film, but it keeps its focus tight, its perspective personal and director Matthias Glasner has opted for a visual style that’s reasonably straightforward – no distracting flourishes or overstriving flairs. This keeps attention firmly on the emotional beats of the story, and these can beat a viewer hard in the face… repeatedly. There’s a kitchen table conversation between mother Lissy and her son Tom that’s an exercise in hilarious brutality.

The cast inhabit their brittle characters with tremendous skill, and Eidinger is a particular standout. It feels as though the character of Ellen would do better in a different movie, and her alcohol-fuelled self-destruction is too thinly sketched, too typical. It’s a credit to Strangenberg in that she can rise above it and make Ellen into a fully-formed character. There are other missteps too, and occasions where characters so cold as to be sociopathic feel forced into existence to get the plot where it needs to go. All the same, such criticisms feel trite when the overall experience of the movie is an inspiring one. Who would have thought that a three-hour German film about being confronted by death could be so entertaining?

Oliver Johnston

Dying does not have a UK release date yet.

Read more reviews from our Berlin Film Festival 2024 coverage here.

For further information about the event visit the Berlin Film Festival website here.

Watch two clips from Dying here: