Öngyilkos túra

Enyhén meditatív, északian hűvös elmélkedés arról, hogy élni vagy nem élni, ha valami lelkileg letarol, de otthon van valaki, akit szereted. Attraktív műfaji forma sötétebb színekben, viszonylag banális, semmi érdekesre nem fejlesztett és érzelmileg eltávolodott tartalommal. [Sitges FF] (2019.10.05)

In this grim drama, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau excels as an insurer with a brain tumour who is prevented from committing suicide by the thought of his loving wife (and also the fact that something always gets in the way every time he tries to kill himself). In order to leave the world in peace, he decides to go to a mountain hotel specializing in assisted suicides for its guests, which he accidentally learns about. At the hotel, the staff cares for the well-being of its clients, serves them hallucinogenic tea and tries to make the killing process as pleasant as possible. However, there is nothing in the film resembling pleasant feelings - the characters in the film are helpless, depressed and mentally broken individuals, doubting their decisions, the non-linearly told story has a strong funeral atmosphere and the images are eternally grey and hazy. The film offers nothing more than this and, like its protagonist, doesn’t really know what to do with itself. Surprisingly, the film doesn’t really encourage debates about the moral aspects of suicide, it builds incredibly slowly and, through various disturbing hints, it almost ends up feeling like it belongs to the thriller genre. This fact doesn’t help it much, because it never pays off the twists and instead of a relatively satisfactory point (which has been there all along), the film only stumbles to an uncertain and interpretatively open conclusion. (2019.10.03)

Max, who is terminally ill dying of a tumor, decides to spare his loved ones and secretly check into a mountain resort, where a company dealing with a luxurious and modern way of delivering assisted suicide is based. This is how the movie begins and unfortunately then ends without much development. A large part of the movie is dominated by flashbacks revealing the motives of the protagonist, why he decided on such an extreme solution, and why he still has doubts about whether he made the right decision. Nevertheless, I cannot say that Nikolai Coster-Waldau's laid-back performance is entirely convincing to me, that his character has really thought about what he is doing, and is therefore not acting completely impulsively. The chillingly narrated drama shows signs of a thriller at one point, but it really is only a little flicker, I expected some change of genre. The movie deviates slightly from a completely cold approach, at least in the scenes where we watch the protagonist's clueless attempts to force himself to commit suicide, and that his own efforts use the most overused ways, whose obsolescence ends up seeming grotesque. The ending is left open, but for this type of movie I would have rather preferred a clearer and more determined conclusion. [Sitges 2019] (2019.10.03)