Competition: Berlinale film “Die”: What do you actually want?

Director Matthias Glasner’s films are mostly about the big, existential whole. Of course, this carries the risk of getting bogged down and ending up with more questions raised than answers. That’s not bad per se, after all, that’s exactly the job of art. But the question should have a certain consistency. In his three-hour epic “Dying,” Glasner explores with great gesture the question of how we have become, what we never wanted to be, why we make life decisions that we deep down know are misleading, why we are on the In the persistent search for the supposed happiness in life, we always end up with the influences that we once planned to escape.

While this search in Glasner’s earlier films such as “The Free Will” (2006) unfolded in a drastic way that was right on the border of tolerable, “Die” appears rather conventional in terms of film and narrative. The focus is on a dysfunctional family as a repository of emotional cripples that the two siblings Tom (Lars Eidinger) and Ellen (Lilith Stangenberg) carry with them through life as a burden. There is no longer any inner cohesion in this family. Mother Lissy (Corinna Harfouch) is basically happy to be able to send her husband, who suffers from severe dementia, to a home at the first opportunity. She also doesn’t really have anything to say to her son, who lives as a conductor in Berlin. The sister immediately left the family unit completely and deals with her neuroses with considerable amounts of alcohol.

Glasner has divided his film into chapters in which the events are viewed from the perspective of a family member. In doing so, he tries to give the many parallel storylines a structure, which works to some extent until halfway through the film’s running time. He skillfully lays out a kaleidoscope of German sensitivities before us; from the care crisis to loneliness as a normal social condition or the renegotiation of gender roles. The central figure and point of reference in all episodes is the son and brother Tom. Professionally successful, he nevertheless meanders through his life in the hipster bubble of Berlin-Mitte, struggles with his fears of commitment, and soon the famous question “What do you actually want?” is asked by his assistant and part-time lover (Saskia Rosendahl). This isn’t particularly new or original; Eidinger seems committed to roles in which characters from the well-off middle class ask questions about meaning in their spacious lofts and have problems that many other people would like to have.

With the film title, Glasner – intentionally or not – sets a false trail, because although there is death in “Dying”, the central point is the discussion of the living about the question of how a “real” life can go if the baggage of origin is lost It becomes a hindrance and the traditional model of the nuclear family seems so outdated and uncool, at least in urban areas Right Middle. The key moment is the scene in which mother and son assure each other that they have never really loved each other and are warmly connected in mutual dislike. However, this dialogue, which should take your breath away, is so exaggerated that it becomes a farce and the first laughs can be heard from the audience. Incomprehensibly, “Dying” increasingly becomes grotesque as it progresses, which activates the viewer’s shame reflex and gradually causes interest in the event to fade. Did Glasner not trust his own characters to let them act in such exaggerated ways? He, who also wrote the script, certainly didn’t have a comedy in mind when he came up with scenes that are more reminiscent of slapstick than drama and make it very difficult to identify with the characters. Proof of how thin the line is between art and kitsch; and this despite the fact that Glasner addresses this very question in the film in the character of the composer Bernard (Robert Gwisdek), who is destroyed by his self-doubt.

The fact that you are hardly bored is thanks to the excellent ensemble of actors. As always, it is a pleasure to watch Corinna Harfouch, in this case how she plays the mother as a lonely, outwardly emotionless and empathetic woman who can shake certainties with a single word, as if said in passing. Such roles seem to be tailor-made for her, as she already embodied a character that was similar down to the last detail in Jan-Ole Gerster’s film “Lara” (2019). Lilith Stangenberg plays the excesses of her character in an enchantingly believable way, but the weaknesses of the script still mean that the individual storylines don’t want to come together as a whole in the end. As an actor, Eidinger is in his own category anyway; In “Die” he proves once again that he can cry on command, even without any aids.

“Die”: Germany 2024. Director and screenplay: Matthias Glasner. With: Lars Eidinger, Corinna Harfouch, Lilith Stangenberg. 183 min. Dates: Wed, February 9, 3 p.m., Verti Music Hall;
Sun., February 25th, 8:45 p.m., Colosseum 1

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