Dying in Sight & Sound

Matthias Glasner’s Dying unfolds in five chapters and an epilogue, and the fourth of these chapters is entitled ‘Der Schmale Grat’ or ‘The Thin Line’. The line in question is the tightrope that artists walk between making work that is accessible to the masses while remaining steadfast in their pursuit of truth. Fail to hit that fine margin, composer Bernard Drinda (Robert Gwisdek) warns, and you’re left with nothing more than kitsch, which Bernard describes as the dismal result when “the feeling doesn’t reach to reality.”

The character of Bernard may be speaking for the writer-director, who spends three hours navigating a series of perilously thin lines and constantly reaching for a vivid sense of reality. When Glasner opens Dying on the sight of an old woman sitting in her own faeces while her husband wanders around half-naked and oblivious to her plight, the stage seems set for a pitiless examination of the indignities of old age, à la Amour (2012) or Vortex (2021), but his film moves in unpredictable ways which reflect the complex and contradictory nature of these characters. Glasner finds comedy amid the tragedy, and pathos in the mess of life.

Read the rest of my review at Sight & Sound

Discussing National Gallery on the Wiseman Podcast

As a longtime admirer of the legendary documentarian Frederick Wiseman it was my pleasure to recently take part in the Wiseman Podcast, where I talked about his 2014 film National Gallery. This particular film is one I cherish, as it led to me interviewing Wiseman for the film’s release in 2015, and I enjoyed revisiting it for this conversation, which covered the film and how it reflects wider aspects of Wiseman’s career. The Wiseman Podcast is hosted by Shawn Glinis and Arlin Golden, who have created an invaluable resource in their film-by-film analysis of this great filmmaker. You can listen to our National Gallery conversation and find the previous 45 episodes here.

Steven Soderbergh on Jaws

When I spoke to Steven Soderbergh about his latest film Black Bag earlier this year, we spent some time at the end of the interview talking about Jaws. It was such a thrill to see how passionate he was about this film, which has remained a source of inspiration and fascination throughout his entire career. With Jaws celebrating its 50th anniversary this week, Soderbergh's enthusiastic appraisal of the film can be read that the BFI website now.

https://www.bfi.org.uk/sight-and-sound/features/steven-soderbergh-jaws-every-time-i-look-film-it-gets-better

Black Bag in Sight & Sound

I recently had the pleasure of sitting down with Steven Soderbergh to discuss his low-budget ghost movie Presence, and a few weeks ago I was privileged enough to have a follow-up conversation with him. This time we were talking about Black Bag, his slick and very enjoyable thriller about marriage between spies, which is material tailor-made for Soderbergh's style and sensibilities. He is always a terrific interviewee and you can read my piece on him in the April 2025 issue of Sight & Sound, which is on sale now.

The Seed of the Sacred Fig

Mohammad Rasoulof’s The Seed of the Sacred Fig is a portrait of three women who live in the shadow of their family’s patriarch. The film opens with Iman (Missagh Zareh) being appointed as an investigating judge in the Revolutionary Court in Tehran; it's a role that will earn him a significantly higher salary and allow him to move his family to a bigger house in a better community. Iman has toiled as a lawyer for years and sees this as his overdue reward, but his more high-profile role comes with dangers. “You must be irreproachable,” his wife Najmeh (Soheila Golestani) warns their teenage daughters, Rezvan (Mahsa Rostami) and Sana (Setareh Maleki).

Read the rest of my review at The Skinny