Intimate and gruelling

Most films about people undergoing a slow death have an inevitable sentimentality about them. It’s a feeling I resist and then fall for – like eating too much chocolate. Not so Stopped on Track, a new German film. It’s about a man, Frank, who is diagnosed with an aggressive brain tumour. It's gruelling and true. It combines all the wretchedness, tedium and sadness that accompanies a slow death. And I think the audience feels these three qualities in equal measure, with a couple of light moments thrown in. Very powerful. Great acting. I did not feel emotionally manipulated, just very sad. And a bit bored at times – which felt appropriate.

I felt there was some irony at the expense of the health profession. Their capacity to do anything in the face of his dying and the terrible burden this placed on his family seemed limited in the extreme, and their words felt kind but hollow. I doubt that this was the intention of the director, Andreas Dresen, who also made Cloud Nine – a film I really liked at MIFF a couple of years ago. In this film, he used a mix of professional actors and these real-life health professionals, and much of the dialogue was improvised as the filming took place.

The Eye for Film critic said: “It's seamlessly delivered; it just doesn't seem to have much to say.” I felt that this was missing the point – it is about a journey – the most universal of journeys and one that we often resist seeing up close and slow. The Telegraph critic got it:

”For this is a film about adaptation and coping. It’s a record of a journey as difficult as any polar expedition; counselors offer Simone and her husband’s family sketchy maps of the new, fraught world in which they now find themselves, but essentially they have to draw on their deepest reserves of love, pity and resourcefulness."

The film begins in a hospital waiting room. Frank ans his wife Simone are called into the doctor's surgery where he shows them slides of Frank's brain and tells them what has been found. The scene is quiet and sparse. They are shocked. Simone cries silently and Frank looks like he has been run over by a bus ('stopped in track, in fact). There is a lengthy silence, eventually filled by the doctor with information about potential life span. It is very well handled - no music, no embellishment - just sparse and empty. One other aspect that I liked was that over the course of the film, Frank used a mobile phone to records short bursts about himself and to capture his family reacting to him. This mini film within a film not only gave us insights into how he was feeling but mimicked, for me, the fragments of memory that you retain of someone who has died. This is an intimate and authentic film.