20/02/2024 - BERLINALE 2024: The German director enlightens us on how love, music and hope intertwine in his dark dramedy starring Lars Eidinger and Corinna Harfouch

(© Dario Caruso/Cineuropa)

German director Matthias Glasner enlightens us on how love, music and hope intertwine in his dark dramedy Dying [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Matthias Glasner
film profile], a Berlinale Competition entry starring Lars Eidinger and Corinna Harfouch.

Cineuropa: The title of the film is Dying, which suggests something ongoing, rather than completed. Why?
Matthias Glasner: It was important for me that the film would be about life during the process of dying. It surprised me, in my own life, that my parents not just died, but were dying for many years. This time period did something to me: I had to manage the guilt of feeling like I wasn’t capable of really dealing with my parents, and I was asking myself, “Why so? Why do I not love them so much, and why I am trying to shy away from this process?” So, the core of the initial idea for the project was to tell the story of someone who is going through this.

It feels like it’s not just the parents who are dying in your film; the children – Tom and Ellen – are, too, even though they’re not terminally ill.
I have heard many different interpretations, especially about Ellen, which surprises me. All of these are totally okay because the film is very open to all these interpretations, and instead of having a message, it offers an opportunity to reflect on these things. Personally, I think that Tom and Ellen deal with the fact that they're not feeling loved by their mother or by the world in two different ways. If you don’t get that love in the first three years of your life, you’re not able to accept the love of the rest of the world. You get very lonely and deal with that in different ways. Tom became an artist, and he found out that it’s only while he is making art that he feels good about himself. You can see that he’s very alive and intense when he's working with the orchestra; he loves creating moments of magic with them.

Meanwhile, Ellen decides that she only feels alive when she's drinking, having sex or doing crazy things. She is maybe a bit jealous of her brother’s success, but at the same time, she doesn't have the strength to go the same way. I think Ellen is much more talented than Tom. She's a real artist but doesn't want to go through the system, whereas Tom does – not happily, but he does. And when you don't feel loved by the world, there is always a little bit of longing for death, to get out of the mess that your life has become.

What may help people get through hard times is hope. Tom says that playing and conducting a piece of music about dying is an act of hope. Was making Dying a similar emotional act for you?
This sentence is so important to me that I have the characters say it twice: first Tom, then Bernard. It's so important for them: the hope is not in the piece itself, but in the fact that they are playing it together. That they’re still living, no matter how terrible and scary life can be at times. For me, working is always an emotional act. When I’m directing, I can feel good about myself; I can love myself.

Why did you choose to make music such an important element of your film?
I have always been into music; I composed a lot of classical music when I was young. I wanted to become a conductor, but my piano playing wasn't good enough for that. So, I became a director. Godard said that's the one profession where you don't really have to be good at anything. Music was always important for me and also for my family. It’s something that connects people more than anything else. In the oldest cultures, people sit together and make music, and they sing together. Music always runs deep.

In Dying, I allowed myself to put a full, five-minute scene of the playing of the piece of music. You just see the faces and the musicians, concentrated on playing their instruments. I love these shots. I worked long and hard on this music with my composer. Many things in this film came in an easy way, but not this one. The character of Bernard is very troubled, but the music he creates is beautiful because that’s where he feels at home.

You look at your characters with compassion. You don’t judge them, no matter what they do.
Early on, I said to myself that I wanted it to be a tender film. As a person, I’m not very judgemental: I think human beings are allowed to be the way they are. They can drink alcohol if they like, have fun, have sex – maybe they will die earlier, but that's okay for them. Someone can take his own life, if he thinks that's his choice, because he thinks life is not good for him. I'm fine with that. I always say that nothing that human beings do is ever alien to me.