Dying (Sterben, 2024) ‘MAMI’ Movie Review: An Unhurried, Detailed Look into the Burden of Living

Matthias Glasner’s “Dying” is three hours long but it passes by like a breeze. As its English title suggests, the film is more about the verb than the noun. It isn’t about the hopeless finality of death as much as it is about the process of dying. While it examines the effects of loss, it remains focused on following the gradual loss of life in whatever ways we choose to define it. Glasner’s script mainly revolves around six characters – four family members and two people related to them. Through their lives, Glasner explores ‘dying’ in different contexts and shows the gradual journey that precedes and/or follows a loss; be it of a person or our hopes, passions, or lifelong ambitions.

The film is divided into a few chapters and it ends with an epilogue. Splitting it into these individual chapters helps the film connect its different narrative threads into a single cohesive unit. Initially, it offers a look into the lives of Lissy (Corinna Harfouch) & Gerd Lunies (Hans-Uwe Bauer), a married couple in the twilight years of their lives, living by themselves in a German town, while struggling with health concerns. Gerd shows signs of Parkinson’s disease while Lissy is facing a terminal illness. Despite these grave issues, they are interdependent. Their children, however, remain absent from the picture.

Dying (Sterben, 2024) ‘MAMI’ Movie Review — A still from “Dying” (*Sterben,* 2024)

Their son, Tom (Lars Eidinger) is an esteemed music conductor, well in his late thirties, who lives away in a city. We meet him as he conducts a musical piece, composed by Bernard (Robert Gwisdek). Unlike Tom who functions more like a creatively talented executor, Bernard is a self-proclaimed ‘artist,’ deeply committed to his art. For those who have worked in similarly dictatorial settings like a film set, Bernard is basically a director with a massive ego, who makes a case of projecting the profundity of his work rather than lucidly communicating with his collaborators to bring his vision to life. So, Tom needs to balance Bernard’s artistic ego with the contractual obligations.

While bearing this burden, Tom raises a baby in an unorthodox family along with his ex-girlfriend and her current partner. As he experiences second-hand fatherhood, his roughly same-aged sister, Ellen (Lilith Stangenberg) works as an assistant at a dental practice. She has an on-and-off affair with a married dentist, Sebastian (Ronald Zehrfeld). Unlike a relatively calm and composed Tom, Ellen is highly impulsive and distraught. Her youthful recklessness makes Sebastian fall for her. Yet, the same recklessness comes in between their happiness as the two start facing issues based on their growing age and the baggage they carry, of emotions and responsibilities.

Despite being introduced as a contemplation about death and impending grief, the film becomes a painstaking analysis of its characters and their distinct personalities. It uses its relatively longer runtime to slowly unravel bits and pieces about its characters, their behavioral traits, and how they were formed. Instead of direct expositions, the script depends on their actions and conversations to inform us about their personalities. The characters either succumb to their vices, mature from their past mistakes, or remain resolutely identical. Their arcs reveal their personalities to us more candidly than any lazy explanation would.

Glasner’s Silver Bear-winning screenplay lays out a series of unorthodox relationships and characters without exaggerating their otherness. In his script, a man stays in a relationship with his ex-partner without any romantic or sexual expectations while a woman remains incapable of love, unlike the usual portraits of motherly characters. Their needs and desires appear as natural as any ‘normal’ character or a relationship would. It’s a refreshing change of pace to watch these things unfold subtly while dramatized performativity is at its peak in similar dramas.

“Dying” maturely deals with the themes of aging, emotional distance, male ego, and the loss of hope in the later years of anyone’s adult life. In the film, Ellen represents someone trying to latch on to the bits of her careless younger self while dealing with the realities of her age. Sebastian occasionally seeks the same free-spirited life whereas Bernard grapples with the naked truth of his artistic voice. Glasner does not rush through any of its thematic explorations and gives it just enough space and time to flourish. His direction uses the characters’ self-destructive or self-reflexive choices and, surprisingly, never loses its emotional grip.

Glasner manages the tonal shifts between manically chaotic, frantically hilarious, and predictably somber moments while offering just enough subtext to be a cerebral but not a pandering exercise. As Ellen, Lilith Stangenberg delivers a bravura performance, making us empathize with her chaotic character without letting her impulsiveness seem like bouts of juvenile antics. While she is rather the energetic highlight of the film, Lars Eidinger shows restraint, expertly balancing out the film’s psychological core. After living with all these characters through thick and thin, you start caring for them as someone in your life. The film stays with you even long after the credits roll.