“Sophia, Death and I”
Charly Hübner’s tragicomic directorial debut
Charly Hübner (lr), Johanna Gastdorf, Dimitrij Schaad, Anna Maria Mühe, Lina Beckmann, Marc Hosemann and Thees Uhlmann at the premiere in Berlin. photo
© Gerald Matzka/dpa
A young man is about to die and is personally informed of the death at his front door. The film “Sophia, der Tod und ich” by Charly Hübner, based on a novel by Thees Uhlmann, tells how things turned out differently.
What do you pack with you when you have to die? Maybe something to drink, Reiner spontaneously thinks of. What else is there to do if just that Death rang the doorbell and announced you only had three minutes to live?
The film “Sophia, der Tod und ich” based on a novel by Thees Uhlmann tells how things turned out differently at first. From August 31, the film by Charly Hübner with Anna Maria Mühe (“Tatort”, “Novemberkind”) and Dimitrij Schaad (“Kleo”) can be seen in German cinemas. The story, which moves somewhere between comedy and tragedy, is not really scary. Using fantasy elements, however, it sometimes appears ironic and eerie.
Trailers
The story about death is one thing above all: an ode to life. Attention bulrush: everyone has to die at some point, whether in three minutes or 30 years. The film is a reminder to seize your time. But it is not only convincing with its fundamental life-affirming orientation. The fast dialogues drip with cynicism. And there is something so bureaucratic and German about the job of death – as Reiner notes in the book – that the actual subject – the sudden death of a young man – is actually not all that sad. Instead, the focus shifts to what is actually important in life.
But what does that actually mean, life? Actually not much for the dying Reiner. Wine bottles pile up in his Berlin bachelor pad, one cigarette glows after the next. The young-at-heart guy doesn’t seem really happy. When three young Jehovah’s Witnesses asked him if he sometimes prayed at his front door, he replied: “Yes, because of football.” So much cynicism must be. The fact that this depressed man jumps off the shovel of death personified by the name of Morten de Sarg (Marc Hosemann) is the greatest irony of the film.
Feelings in Mason Jars
Death also experiences what life means – because after Reiner’s unsuccessful transition to the realm of the dead, Morten is trapped in Reiner’s realm. With him and Reiner’s ex Sophia, Morten takes the train north and drinks his first three beers on the way. He describes, like a little kid, what swearing or being drunk feels like. Almost as if being able to feel is something really fantastic.
It’s just that feeling isn’t always that easy. Schaad, who can identify with his character Reiner, also knows this, as he told the German Press Agency. “I was raised by the generation of men who squeezed their feelings into mason jars and hid them somewhere deep in the basement.” He had to learn to express his feelings first. “Fortunately, I’ve trained myself to talk about feelings like love, fear, joy, and hope. If you choose to learn it, you can open up.”
Reiner then suddenly learns this in a pig gallop after death had given him one last chance, so to speak. He’s actually not that good at maintaining relationships. It also fits that he has a son of primary school age, with whom he only occasionally corresponds via postcards. With his unexpected new time and with his new you-only-live-once attitude, he now dares to do something he should have done a long time ago.
Sophia, death and I, Germany 2023, 90 minutes, FSK oA, by Charly Hübner, screenplay by Lena May Gray, based on the novel by Thees Uhlmann, with Dimitrij Schaad, Anna Maria Mühe and Marc Hosemann.