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‘Dying’ Review: Matthias Glasner’s Three-Hour Thanatopsis Feels Slight, Despite Its Epic Running Time
Matthias Glasner contemplates mortality in 'Dying,' his first feature since 2012, a comedy-drama built around various members of a single family.
Tom, the pseudo-stepfather to his ex’s baby with another man, is deep in the process of perfecting an orchestral piece called “Sterben” (“Dying”) written by his old friend and uneasy collaborator Bernard (Robert Gwisdek), though his young musicians don’t seem to grasp its nuances. The musicians’ conversations and debates on death lead to new ways of expressing and performing, but in these moments, the film’s self-reflexivity begins to stagnate, as Glasner and cinematographer Jakub Bejnarowicz seldom match this sense of artistic transformation with visual evolution of their own. In the process, spoken words become the movie’s crutch, especially when the fourth key family member is introduced: Tom’s sister Ellen (Lilith Stangenberg), an amateur singer and wayward dental assistant having an affair with her employer, Sebastian (Ronald Zehrfeld).
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