Dying

Matthias Glasner achieves the seemingly impossible: reconciling pathos with humor, melodrama with art-house sensibilities, and keeping his story of a dysfunctional family from veering into therapeutic clichés. His film centers on a conductor—a person who controls the orchestra and the audience, sets the tone, dictates the mood, and essentially manages emotions. However, in Tom's (Lars Eidinger's) private life, everything is falling apart. His ailing parents require him to return home, which he had left with relief, his alcoholic sister (Lilith Stangenberg) resurfaces, his ex-girlfriend accuses him of being the father of her child with someone else, and his composer friend sinks into depression. Glasner crafts a shamelessly direct, darkly humorous, and moving story about the absurdity of life, tackling themes such as inherited deficits, the paradoxes of commitment, transience, and the irony of fate. It’s a tale about the difficult art of navigating existential chaos. Dying is arranged as an intimate portrait of a man seeking solace in music and a woman seeking oblivion in sex and alcohol. It’s also a tragicomedy about loneliness in an era of disintegrating traditional family ties. Glasner's relentless pursuit of emotional truth makes Dying a profoundly vivid film.