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BERLINALE 2022 Encounters

Review: The Death of My Mother

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- BERLINALE 2022: Jessica Krummacher observes the last days of a mother-daughter relationship

Review: The Death of My Mother
Elsie de Brauw and Birte Schnöink in The Death of My Mother

“The metamorphosis of my mother into a living corpse is complete.” Juliane (Birte Schnöink) is condemned to watch her mother die. Kerstin (Elsie de Brauw), only 64 years old and way too young to part with the world, is fighting an undefined illness. One that has not only taken her freedom, but also confined her to the cage of an unresponsive body. Kerstin wants to end it, but euthanasia is still forbidden in Germany.

In her second feature film, entitled The Death of My Mother [+see also:
trailer
interview: Jessica Krummacher
film profile
]
and shown in the Encounters section of this year’s Berlinale, German director Jessica Krummacher processes the personal experience of a loved one parting in a way that forgoes society’s wishes. Wishing for death in face of an unlivable life is not condemnable. Why is pain secondary in the face of one’s final obliteration, Juliane wonders. Since no hospice will take Kerstin, she will have to force her death in her catholic nursing home.

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The staff on location sympathises with her. “It is not me as a doctor, but rather the patient and those around her who will map out her final journey,” Kerstin’s doctor (Christian Löber) assures them, as he keeps changing her morphine patches. Kerstin will need those painkillers. With what little mental clarity she has left, she has decided to starve herself. Only few oppose this decision, either due to their own personal comfort zone, or their inevitable religious belief. “You can’t simply decide on this. One does not simply die like that. God decides,” a nurse once quietly whispers into her ear.

Krummacher chooses to tell this emotional story of a mother-daughter bond in its last days by highlighting its uneasiness and alienation. Juliane is often framed in the corner of the picture, lost in the moment, in the situation. The primarily employed static wide shots seem distant, empty, as though the void was creeping in from all corners. The few moments that openly challenge the legal hardships of Kerstin’s fate are arranged as confrontational symmetrical shots. But the clinical sterile background makes the characters blend into the background, their message lost to the general recipient.

Krummacher doesn’t shy away either from applying religious iconography. With the mother bared up in her bed, her daughter half kneeling by her side and the halo of the lamp above them, the source of inspiration is not hard to guess. But while Krummacher does point out the inhumane status quo, hers is primarily the story of a daughter getting ready to let her mother go, the inner conflict of hanging on to one’s first caregiver to give them in return the care they need to pass on.

Much of the movie’s daunting style is due to de Brauw’s impressive acting feat. While Kerstin is mostly confined to her bed, de Brauw offers a raw powerhouse of a performance. A woman locked in a failing body, her random babbles, her tearful memories and the fear of what might lie beyond death are a heart-wrenching trip to witness. The effects of the starvation, her pasty body covered in bruises and the deep circles under her eyes are hard to stomach. This is contrasted to the deliberately distant and alien performances from the supporting cast. The emotional trauma of seeing someone die is too much, and they pull up their guard.

While Krummacher understands how to navigate this difficult topic, her gaze too often gets lost on the periphery. The Death of my Mother simply runs too long at 135 minutes. Juliane is caught up in repetitive cycles of mourning in the forest, taking food in or walking the grounds of the nursing home. A case in point is an extended dinner with friends in one of former chancellor Helmut Kohl’s favourite restaurants.

As Juliane keeps reading letters between German playwright Bertold Brecht and his wife Helen Weigel to Kerstin, a pattern emerges. Weigel, who was the centre of Brecht’s cosmos and who had to break free of her dependence on him, serves as the obvious symbolism at hand. The same goes for Brecht’s and Simone de Beauvoir’s thoughts on communism in the western world: “It can only survive if it evaluates itself anew.” Whether this refers to Germany’s stand on euthanasia or Juliane’s need to forge a mother-free identity is for the viewer to decide.

The Death of My Mother was produced by Walker+Worm Film.

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