‘Dying’ Review: Lars Eidinger Carries The Weight Of Matthias Glasner’s Deep And Darkly Funny Family Drama
deadline.comLissy (Corinna Harfouch) is huddled on the floor in her nightgown, trying to ring her son. Her legs and nightgown are smeared brown with her regular nightly incontinence, but it is her husband who worries her: Gerd (Hans-Uwe Bauer) has wandered outside again, not sure where he is and wearing no pants.
Her neighbor is at the door, insisting on being helpful, while Lissy just wants her to cut short this humiliation; has she spotted that even the phone is now daubed with excrement?
Old age ain’t no place for sissies, as Bette Davis famously said. The usual riposte is that it’s better than the alternative, but Matthias Glasner’s long, absorbing and intermittently very funny film calls that into question.
Life, even before the debilities of age become its main feature, is the real difficulty. Glasner’s story is a version of a traditional family saga, but deconstructed to become a series of overlapping chapters about the family’s component individuals.
Read more on deadline.com
