Parky At the Pictures (25/7/2025)

(Reviews of Dying; and Zero)

DYING.

German director Matthias Glasner and actress Corinna Harfouch go back a long way. She took the lead in his early features, Sexy Sadie (1996) and Fandango (2000), as well as the

TV-movie, Die fremde Frau (2003). But they hadn't worked together on a feature since This Is Love (2009) before reuniting on Glasner's most ambitious project to date, Dying, which requires three hours to chronicle the dysfunctions of a family on the edge.

Lissy (Corinna Harfouch) and Gerd Lunies (Hans-Uwe Bauer) are getting on and increasingly find daily life a struggle. He is suffering from Parkinson's disease and often goes wandering without pants, while she keeps getting caught short for the bathroom. They have two children, but they rarely come to Hanstadt and neighbour, Susanne (Catherine Stoyan), has to climb through the bedroom window when Lissy has a heart attack in the middle of the night. As social services have decided they don't need additional home assistance, Gerd is put in a Red Cross hostel while his wife recovers. He keeps wandering away, however, and Lissy prefers the quiet without him. Indeed, when he rings the doorbell during a nocturnal downpour, she opts against opening the door and feels guilty as she watches him shuffle away.

Son Tom (Lars Eidinger) has a complicated life in the city. He is still close to ex-partner, Liv (Anna Bederke), and attends the birth of her daughter because the father, Moritz (Nico Holonics), is hopeless. A classical conductor, Tom is also having trouble getting the orchestra to understand a new symphony, entitled `Dying', by short-fused composer, Bernard (Robert Gwisdek), who bellows at the musicians for not appreciating his genius. Faced with the prospect of postponing the premiere, the last thing Tom needs is his parents causing problems and he keeps Lissy at phone's length, while promising to visit as soon as he can.

At the christening party on a floating barge, Tom jokes with Bernard about stealing Liv from him. But he turns serious when he reveals that they had only become a couple after she had had an abortion that he had not wanted. Now, she hands him the crying baby in the night because Moritz is only good for complaining that Tom has come to the party when he's her lover now. Going outside for air, Tom gets a call from his younger sister, Ellen (Lilith Stangenberg), who is panicking because she's started drinking again. After offering some tough advice, Tom hangs up.

When he goes home to visit Gerd, he is pathetically pleased to see him, while all Lissy does is grumble. He frets over bills and Tom has to reassure him that things are fine before showing him a picture of the baby. Concerned by the fact that his father claims to have seen both his children in the last week, yet doesn't realise that Lissy is in the room with them, Tom promises to return as soon as he can and brushes off Lissy's disapproving remark about him conducting a youth orchestra and not professional musicians.

Guiding them through a rehearsal, Tom infuriates Bernard by slowing the piece down and playing it more softly so that the choir can be hear over it. When he stops Bernard from striking girlfriend cellist Mi-Do (Saerom Park), he is dismayed when she accuses him of giving her disdainful looks during the performance and assistant Ronha (Saskia Rosendahl) - who is sleeping with Tom - shoots him a look as she goes to console the distressed musician.

Left alone for the night by hostel staff who can't be bothered to summon a doctor, Gerd dies. Ellen fails to come to the funeral, while Tom's hired electric car runs out of power. Undaunted, Lissy picks up the urn to scatter her husband in a forest cemetery, with little sign of emotion. Eventually, Tom turns up for tea and she reels off a list of the ailments that are slowly killing her. She also tells him where she keeps her savings book and admits that she had never really liked him because he was a bawling baby. Lissy recalls a day with her in-laws when she had dropped him (or maybe thrown him) when he kept crying and had left him on the floor to go to the toy shop to buy him a yellow truck.

Tom remembers it, but barely reacts to anything his mother has said. He blames her for the fact he is so cold and curses the fact that he missed his father's death because he didn't want to be around her. She counteracts by saying she loved Ellen hugely until she went off the rails and she realised she didn't really like anyone. Standing to clear the table, Lissy flinches when Tom pounds the cake with his fist, but continues as if nothing has happened between them.

Ellen wakes in a hotel in Latvia and realises she's been dumped by the man she got drunk with. She flies back to Germany, but misses Tom's calls about their parents being in a bind. Wandering into work as a dental assistant, Ellen flirts with new dentist Sebastian (Ronald Zehrfeld) and they wind up in a bar, where they get so drunk that he chips a tooth and she uses pliers to extract it in the kitchen. Enraging her boss by falling asleep into the face of a patient being drilled, Ellen seeks solace at a gig and gets so drunk that she's indifferent when Sebastian breaks the news that he's married with two kids in Munich. However, she wakes during the night to see her face has swollen in an extreme allergic reaction and she has to call Sebastian to let him know where she is after receiving emergency treatment.

Saddened when she visits her father and he walks out of the room to avoid her, Ellen agrees to stop drinking so she can have a serious relationship with Sebastian. He takes her to Berlin to see her brother conduct and they bump into Tom and Liv at a pizzeria and she grins and bears an evening of catch-up chat with them. Sebastian urges her to sing and is thrilled when she goes down well in a small club. But Ellen finds staying sober a problem and she has a coughing fit at Tom's concert - which had only gone ahead because he had convinced Bernard that things would go well. As Sebastian tries to help her, Ellen throws up and Tom watches from the podium as Bernard grabs his sister and tries to pull her the aisle while the rest of the audience starts to leave. Slumping in a chair, Bernard bellows to Tom to keep playing, but he knows there's no point.

Tom's mood scarcely improves when Moritz and Liv fight for custody of their child and he gets dragged into the lawyer session. However, he gets slapped down when Liv says he can never be the girl's father in the same way as Moritz and his feelings are hurt. Ellen is also devastated when Sebastian informs while treating a patient that they will have to break up as his wife is pregnant. She hits the bottle again (after having dried out during the affair) and calls Sebastian in the rain to sing him a song and reassure him that she has no hard feelings. As she turns to walk away, she is hit by a car and mumbles to the driver that she has no intention of checking out in that manner.

On Christmas Day, Tom dresses as Santa and Moritz scoffs when they pass on the stairs. Lissy goes to see a Nativity play and seems to realise it will be her last one, while Ellen gets drunk with some new friends. Tom is watching the TV version of Ingmar Bergman's Fanny and Alexander (1982) when Bernard calls for a favour. He has decided to kill himself and wants Tom to stand guard so that Mi-Do doesn't find him with slashed wrists in the bath. Handing over the final version of `Dying', Bernard locks himself in the bathroom and Tom knocks on the door in a half-hearted way. Liv calls and orders him to break down the door, as his duty to help Bernard trumps his right to die on his own terms.

Kicking down the door, Tom tells Bernard that he can't let him go without a final hug for his partner. He calls an ambulance and waits for it to arrive before walking away. At the funeral, Liv scolds him for being so emotionally cold. But he has to fight the tears, as he conducts Mi-Do playing `Dying' in the same venue where it had previously stalled. The applause is warm, but brickbats are whispered by some of the guests at the after party. Tom catches Mi-Do's eye, but is distracted by Ronja, who realises that their romance is over, but still wants him to know she is pregnant.

The baby cries as Lissy is remembered in the same forest cemetery as Gerd. Tom tries to offer Ellen the money and a coat her mother had left her, but she drives away without a word. Tom joins Ronja and their son in a rented petrol car (after the snafu with the electric one - that is recalled by the preacher) and heads back to whatever awaits him in Berlin.

Unfolding in five chapters and an epilogue, this involving saga spends much of its time treading what Bernard calls `Der Schmale Grat', or `The Thin Line' between a truthful reality that is accessible to all and an artful kitsch that appeals to no one. It's a risky approach and Glasner loads the post-concert party with haughty cynics kvetching about avant-garde pretension. But, despite ending with a funeral, Dying is actually an optimistic film that clings to Bernard's belief that there is something hopeful and trusting about an person putting something of themselves and their deepest emotions into a piece of art in a bid to connect and spark feelings within the audience.

For all the complex emotions and erratic situations, there isn't a lot of thematic depth to this three-hour melodrama. But it is brimful of poignant reflections, darkly comic asides, and memorable scenes. Clearly drawing on some of his own parental experiences (Gerd is called `My Father' in the credits), Glasner revels in reaffirming the old Tolstoyan maxim about unhappy families. Yet, by keeping Ellen at a distance, her story feels more loosely bound than Tom's, which has more attaching strands, thanks to the Bernard, Ronja, and Liv subplots. She still has some splendid set-pieces, however, with the concert hall kerfuffle coming a close second to the hideously frank tête-à-tête between Tom and Lissy over their true feelings for each other.

The latter exchange tips Corinna Harfouch back into Magda Goebbels mode from Oliver Hirschbiegel's Downfall (2004), as she remains entirely impassive while reeling off her various cancers and diabetes-related ailments and informing the equally rebarbative Lars Eidinger of her lifelong antipathy towards him. Trapped between art and emotion, the frigidly inscrutable Eidinger makes for a fascinating comparison with Benjamin Lavernhe's conductor in Emmanuel Courcol's The Marching Band (2024), which also examines contrasting musical styles in a life-or-death context. However, there is also a hint of Henry Arnold's Hermann Simon from Edgar Reitz's Heimat series (1984-2006), another musician-cum-conductor with a complicated relationship with his mother and his sense of belonging.

There's an ironic twist to this mother/son connection in the fact that Harfouch is the mother of Robert Gwisdek, although Lissy and Bernard don't have a scene together. They do share a bleak sense of humour, however, with Tom being the butt of their remarks. But he clearly feels closer to the man with whom he creates music (yet lets die) than he does to the woman who gave life to him and the two partners with whom he `has' children. Like Lilith Stangenberg's Ellen, Anna Bederke's Liv and Saskia Rosendahl's Ronja are well played, but fitfully extraneous to a study of shared history that refuses to flinch from the grim indignities and inevitabilities of existence and the frustrating fleetingness and fallaciousness of the things that make life worthwhile. But they're nicer people than Ronald Zehrfeld's Sebastian and Nico Holonics's Moritz, whose attitudes to fatherhood make one wish Glasner had done more to explore the character and legacy of Hans-Uwe Bauer's Gerd, as his dementia almost gives him a Get Out of Jail Free card when it comes to his role in shaping his children's destinies.

On the technical side, Jakub Bejnarowicz's camera is a discreet presence that often holds back to allow scenes to play out in lengthy takes. But it can also be nimble, as can Heike Gnida's editing, most notably in the first concert sequence and the Christmas montage. Then there's Lorenz Dangel's score, which stops the clocks during the climactic performance of `Sterben'. Yet one audience member can still manage to dismiss this with the sneering aside, `The whole thing is a huge banality.' Some have said the same of Glasner's film. It's by no means perfect, with the writing occasionally feeling blatant and direction sometimes seeming overly cautious. But the naysayers would be mistaken and one wonders whether there isn't a four-hour tele-version waiting to be discovered.

ZERO.

Having debuted with Dealer (2014), Congolese film-maker Jean Luc Herbulot made his name with Saloum (2021), a fact-based crime horror that centred on a mercenary trio known as `the Hyenas of Bangui'. He remains in Senegal for his follow-up feature, Zero, which may be less genre fluid and more polemical than its predecessor, but is still undeniably intriguing.

Waking on a bus in Dakar, One (Hus Miller) is confused why he's not at the Radison for a meeting. The American is handed a phone and a bluetooth earpiece by a woman who tells him to listen to the instructions he will receive. Discovering he has been strapped to an activated bomb with a 10-hour timer, One follows the directions given by the Phone Voice (Willem Dafoe) so he can evade the cops and lie low in a backstreet shop. Here, he's informed that he will be freed if he completes five missions before the deadline expires and that he will be terminated if he makes any attempts to ask for help.

Giving his watch to the shopkeeper, One rides pillion on a motorbike to Divinity beach, where he is ordered to take a phone from a yellow-tracksuited wrestler named Missile (Samba Mbodj). Showing the bomb underneath a heavy winter coat, One is able to flee with the phone, only to be flattened by a huge explosion. As the Phone hopes this convinces him of the gravity of his situation, One is told to take the phone to Onaye (Roger Sallah).

Meanwhile, Two (Cam McHarg) has delivered a bound-and-gagged man to the Lebanese restaurant owned by Ali Rihan (Renaud Farah), who asks him to tell the Phone never to contact him again. He leaves with a small, black carved box, as the radio news broadcasts about the police hunt for a Caucasian male seen on the beach before the explosion. He has to fight off some angry fight fans who had placed bets on Missile's next bout, but Onaye bails him out and introduces Two to One, when he arrives with Missile's cell. Phone jokes about One's wealth and Two's violence epitomising the land of their birth before he entrusts them to Onaye to fulfil their third mission.

This entails liberating a man called Cherif (Auguste Bruno Derneville) from the Greenhouse, a compound run by a gang of street kids, whose leader, Barka (Magaye Cissé), insists on the Americans doing lines of cocaine before he will enter into negotiations. They pass out and are tied to chairs. But One uses his smarts as a wheeler-dealer for the rich and shady by diverting cash from a secret bank account to Barka, who releases Cherif and sends One on his way with a backslap.

Two is resentful that One has upstaged him and they drive out of the shanty near the rubbish dump with Phone's drone following them. Onaye hands the carved box to Cherif, who is his father. It contains a ring that Barka had sold on the black market before Rihan had found and returned it. But news comes that he has been blown up and people take to the streets to protest at the mayhem and Onaye has to be talked out of killing the Americans by Cherif after he gets a message from Phone. As they flee from Onaye's van, however, the bomb in the box goes off and kills Cherif and his son.

One has had enough, but Two refuses to get caught by the cops or be blown to smithereens. He knocks One out and the scene cuts to Los Angeles two weeks earlier, where the occupants of a car are savagely beaten by Two, who slumps to his haunches to make a phone calls. Back in Dakar, One comes round to see India (Moran Rosenblatt) examining the bomb mechanism. An engineer who knew Two in Afghanistan, she explains the sinister history of the explosives and regrets being unable to defuse them, as she thinks One is cute. He tries to make a call with a child's phone that Two had managed to hide, but the woman in a pizza parlour doesn't pick up.

Driving to a scrapyard, they learn that Phone has discovered their detour and warns Two he knows where he keeps his cash and sends One an ID card for Madeleine (Jessica Lorraine), the daughter he only discovered a fortnight earlier when an old flame in Dakar died. Bonding for the first time, with four hours left on the clock, the Americans set off to find Daniel (Gary Dourdan), who is their fifth contact. He takes them to Medina, the cultural heart of the city, so they can pick up a goat named Emmanuel (who has 50m followers online) and be measured for a dashiki. However, Two gets a text from India telling him how to disarm the bombs and steals some scissors from the tailor to make cuts in the black wires in a changing room.

As they walk through the streets, One asks Daniel how he knows Phone and why he is helping him spread death. But Daniel gives them a lecture on poverty in Dakar and the ability of its citizens to find happiness without material possessions. He claims they will rise up to put right the centuries of oppression and he will be proud to stand beside them when they show the real meaning of life.

They are surprised when he takes them to meet his bride-to-be, Ladja (Angelique Mendes), and explains that they are going to be witnesses to his wedding. As they sit with the family, Daniel explains how America betrayed the 1776 concept of liberty by becoming worse than the empire it broke out of. He calls it a `disease' rather than a country, as it seeks to destabilise and destroy everywhere it goes.

When he excuses himself, One and Two cut the white wires. They also receive a text revealing that everyone who has died thus far has been an Islamic leader and they wonder again about Phone's identity and the motives behind their mission. This involves accompanying Daniel to the Quranic school where he teaches. Angered by discovering that India had been sending worthless texts because her daughter had been taken hostage, Two tries to stab Daniel with the scissors. However, he fights back, as he is terminally ill and has cut a deal to help Phone in return for welfare of his widow.

Leaving Daniel to die against a tree surrounded by weeping students, One and Two head for the beach so they can cause as little damage as possible when their bombs go off. Phone thanks them for lighting a fire under Senegal's oppressed masses and he hopes that they will rise and overthrow the rulers who have failed to sever colonial ties.

Standing on the tideline, Two calls Madeleine with the address of his cash stash. When she calls back, he hands over the phone and One sees her face just as the countdown ends and the screen fills with a red `Zero'. News footage of the street protests is accompanied by a report about the two Americans killing Islamic leaders. The ambassador is expelled and neighbouring states rally around Senegal. But Phone isn't finished yet. He rouses Three (Annabelle Lengronne) from her slumber and activates her with the Eiffel Tower in the background.

As the credits end, Phone says, `Thank you and bye bye!' It's a throwaway ending to a slickly made action tract that is unlikely to reach, let alone impact upon, its target audience. But Herbulot and co-writer Hus Miller will leave the receptive with much to ponder, even though Daniel's sermon over a montage of Dakarois faces staring impassively into the lens is the weakest scene in the film alongside the clumsy LA flashback.

Much more impressive is the use of drone shots to establish the characters in their locales and the distances that Herbulot keeps Grégory Turbellier's from the action to disorientate the viewers and prevent them from over-identifying with the largely backstory-free bombers. The pacing of Raphael Lubczanski's editing is also noteworthy, as it reinforces the sense of confusion that One and Two radiate to the viewers, who are forever thrown off guard by the familiarity of Willem Dafoe's voice, which is curiously reassuring even when it's at its most menacing. Lubczanski also makes a fine job of the Divinity beach explosion, as bodies grotesquely somersault in slow-motion to a whistled rendition of bodies `America the Beautiful'.

As the victim/villains, Miller and Cam McHarg resist courting easy empathy, while also letting slip glimpses of the corrupted morality that has made them ideal candidates for this suicide mission. Their targets are little more than ciphers, while Herbulot offers few insights into daily existence outside Daniel's homily. Turbellier more deftly conveys the director's accusatory anger by picking out the contrasts between the colours of the clothing and the drabness of the habitats, as the camera tours the city from sky and eye level. The musical selections and James BKS's propulsively percussive score also add flavour, but they can't distract from the plot contrivances in the final third or the ease with which One and Two access text messages on a concealed cell and steal the scissors (even though Phone is on to them all along).

Too much time is also spent with the late-arriving Daniel, whose activism is never satisfactorily explained and whose personal reason for co-operating with Phone teeters on melodrama. Nevertheless, this combines suspense, wit, and politics with edge and energy and suggests that Herbulot is much more than just the African Tarantino.