You would think that a three hour film called Dying would be depressing or perhaps overwhelmingly emotional or sentimental. Director Matthias Glasner delivers an absorbing story of a family, told in chapters about each person, and laces it through with humour and an almost dispassionate emotion.

Our first chapter is Lissy (Corinna Harfouch), she is ageing and terminally ill and her husband Gerd (Hans-Uwe Bauer) has advanced Parkinson’s disease. She’s obviously not coping at all but he is irritable when her well-meaning neighbourSusanne (Catherine Stoyan) offers help. What she wants is her children to help her, but they are caught up in their own lives.

Chapter 2 is her son Tom (Lars Eidinger) who she thinks is a successful conductor in Berlin. He is a conductor but only of a youth orchestra and for one piece written by his longtime friend Bernard (Robert Gwusdek) called ‘Dying’. Tom seems to approach life without sentiment and has taken on responsibilities for parenting an ex-girlfriend‘s child, even though that child’s father is keen to assert his place. He also has to battle with Bernard’s perpetual depression and insistence that he will end his life, as soon as everyone can just appreciate his music and play ‘Dying’ right.

There is a daughter, Ellen (Lilith Stangenberg). We see glimpses of her in the first two chapters and from just the subtle references, we can tell she is perennially absent and probably an alcoholic. She is struggling to keep her life together, but seems to have found a soulmate in a work colleague Sebastian (Ronald Zehrfeld) who enjoys a drink but thinks she’s more fun with alcohol.

What we are being shown are the connections between these people and sometimes it’s chilling, sad, and occasionally enriching. There is a scene between Tom and his mother that provokes laughter but is also one of the saddest scenes in the film. There is also an extended scene between Tom and Bernard toward the end of the film which reflects on a person’s right to end their life and it is handled with a gentle lack of judgement and great tenderness.

When we get to the end, the epilogue, we have discovered that the film is really about Tom. It’s his narrative arc and the film title has as much to do with Bernard’s orchestral piece, which is so central to both Tom and the film, and him coming to terms with letting go and holding on. 

There are a few scenes in the film where the orchestra plays Bernard’s piece in full and they are two of the most emotional moments in the film. At one point Sebastian is exhorting Ellen to sing because ‘music makes people happy’ and there is a bittersweet irony to it when we think about Bernard’s tribute to dying.