Hyde Park Pick: Dying

Families. Who’d have ‘em? Everyone, it turns out.

To a greater or lesser extent they can be a source of solace, scattered, toxic, unknown, maniacal, close, estranged, complicated, dysfunctional, caring, distant, loving and likely any combination of these. Writer and artist Douglas Coupland wrote a novel called All Families Are Psychotic (2001) and I think he’s probably right.

And then we have the Lunies family, in German director Matthias Glasner’s perceptive, painful, but wildly entertaining new film Dying. It centres around dying of all kinds, not just our traditional physical end, but the death of relationships, of confidence, of familial love, of embarrassment. Sometimes (and my family is no different) relationships can become unrecoverable and one of the truest truisms is that you can’t choose your family. It’s certainly sad when it happens, but it can be inevitable and the right course to take. It’s these counterintuitive moments that life delivers, where Dying hits the hardest.

But before all this sounds too bleak and morbid, there’s also so much life in the film. The joy of children, the warmth of understanding, the comfort of partners, those weirdly pitch-black moments of comedy which you probably shouldn’t find funny, but you do.

Dying is an epic dissection of family life passing [also a synonym for death] us by, with a run time I barely noticed, much like how our lives seem to zip past as we grow older and relationships and family networks become more complicated and reticular. Slow down people. Have a look at the patterns we make. Pop to the cinema and see Dying. 

To slightly mis-quote the late, great Jerry Springer (himself certainly no stranger to dysfunctional families!), be kind to yourself and each other.

Dying is showing at HPPH from Fri 25 Jul. You can book tickets here.