Dying, loving, living

Intelligent and moving: Hiller/Neuwirth's documentary film about personal experiences with AIDS.

Walter Benner died of AIDS before completing the video film On Living, Loving, Dying. Aware of his illness, he says in front of the camera: “I know that everyone has to die, but up until now it was always only happening to the others.” The others, that's always the ones that get talked about. But in this case, the narrator is one of those others, and the viewer senses that this man feels the same way as the nurse in an AIDS ward: “I wouldn't want to die at all right now.”

Five people talk informally about their experiences with the disease, either from their own experience or from living with someone with AIDS. Their speech comes naturally: no interview questions, no composed thoughts and sentences, no dramatic effects. Walter Hillers and Manfred Neuwirth's film is thus not just another dramatization of a topic that is increasingly being pushed into an uncanny beyond precisely because of its media presence: the discreet style allows the mere presence of the narrators to become a concrete place – where the frightening other takes on the familiar features of the “normal”.

There is nothing new in this film; what we hear from the narrators is only their personal version of well-known stories: from the paralyzing horror of being informed of a death sentence to dealing with dying and a life that is henceforth marked by the cynical whim of approaching death. Nevertheless, Life Love Dying is not a drama of fate. The interviewees' composure alone creates an atmosphere that dispels any shyness in approaching their fate. On the other hand, however, their relentlessness prevents the deceptive momentary wish of the problem consumer to have to do something good for all AIDS patients.

This film will do no more to counter the feeling that it is always the others who die than well-intentioned awareness campaigns. In contrast to these, however, From Life to Love to Die leaves behind the sad, but by no means fatal impression that death is happening right next to you.

Robert Buchschwenter, Die Presse

From Life to Love to Die: Close-ups and infected video images

Of “good friends” who, under the pretext of their duty of care for (long-deceased) grandmothers, excuse themselves when they “hear about it”;
of families who only gather at the deathbed when the inheritance is divided up, and other children who are disowned, and who only with difficulty resist the mistrust of their neighbors;
of assistance that not infrequently comes from the most unexpected quarters; of the need for boundaries and “hygienic measures,” the sense of which must be doubted, and which one refrains from using with people one likes anyway; of the inevitable end that one always wants to leave to the others in the back of one's mind.

From living, loving, dying, an Austrian documentary video by Walter Hiller and Manfred Neuwirth, refrains from all affected jargon when portraying these and other facets of AIDS.
Five eloquent faces, one infected person and four indirectly affected persons in static close-ups, which do not obstruct concentrated listening and looking, five - mostly very vitally presented - perspectives: There is no place here for elaborate, artificial arrangements, with the help of which palatable images arise from the general helplessness. Or lurid headlines, which ultimately discredit the victims.
One bereaved person says that they wish people would stop talking about it as an “epidemic”: a “deadly disease” is what should be assumed, they say, and just as with cancer, there is no need to resort to euphemistic descriptions when making a diagnosis.
Only for a few moments between the blocks of interviews, when slow dissolves infect dirty window panes with stone or grass surfaces, does this film give up its prosaic focus.

These are not so much stubborn as disturbing breaks in a brittle structure of refused speculation, which otherwise more than justifies its cinematic use: so that the viewer pauses before the magnetism of the screen, only to be all the more vehemently set in motion afterwards, reducing distance.

Claus Philipp, Der Standard

On Living, Loving, Dying

The personal consternation about the disease AIDS was the trigger for the two filmmakers Walter Hiller and Manfred Neuwirth to make this touching film: Five people tell stories in it. They do so with the greatest composure and at the same time with the highest concentration. And only they are really competent to talk about it. So they share their experiences, which they have had with the disease on their own body or on the body of another. The two filmmakers Hiller and Neuwirth on their film: “Worse than any persecution is the silence and the repression associated with it. AIDS is a caesura for everyone who comes into contact with it, even if they are not ill.”

täglich alles

On Living, Loving, Dying

AIDS has long since become a topic for art, there are now excellent, touching films about it (”Longtime Compagnion” was perhaps the best). But perhaps it is precisely the artistic realization that has caused the problem to be alienated in beauty. Walter Hiller and Manfred Neuwirth, on the other hand, bring AIDS to our attention, showing nothing less than the face of “the disease. here and today, here in Austria. Five discussion partners (one of whom, a sufferer, has since died) report artlessly on their experiences, the helpers as well as those affected. And more clearly than in any poignant film story, the scourge of our time shows its face, manifests its primal fears and repressions as they occur in everyday life. In our everyday life. Here and now.

Kronenzeitung

Living with AIDS

About the documentary film “Vom Leben Lieben Sterben” by Walter Hiller and Manfred Neuwirth.

Three men and two women talk about AIDS. About their own illness, about their experiences with friends and patients, about the reactions of family members. They sit in their apartment, speak calmly, relaxed, the places of suffering (hospital, doctor's office, etc.) and their associated inventory are left out. In Miller and Neuwirth's video film, closeness is created exclusively through words and gestures and - as paradoxical as it may seem - through the strict form of the staging at a distance.

“On Living, Loving, Dying” organizes the conversations according to the following principle: the people take turns talking, separated by black frames, each segment is self-contained and uncut. The interviewer is not visible, there are no interposed questions, no atmospheric shots, no voiceover commentary. The camera remains motionless in its place, refraining from the popular TV zooms.
We watch people talking, talking about attempts at walking, or rather, living in a largely unknown territory called AIDS. They tell how their lives were changed by the disease, how friends avoided them and jobs were thwarted, how they cared for HIV-positive people and built relationships with them. These are not stories that shock in a cheap way; Hiller and Neuwirth's dealings with the interviewees are characterized by restraint, by careful approach: as if by looking at a foreign territory, that familiarity may gradually arise, which allows the filmmaker/viewer to take his first steps into this territory.

Three similar shots that depart from the “speaker” pattern can be read as a demarcation of this area and interrupt the film at various points: the view from a room through a window to the outside, where leaves can be seen. The image slowly blurs, contours dissolve, and there is a very quiet, oscillating sound. Three pauses, three visual sketches of inside and outside, of closeness and distance, the only moments of “artistry” in a documentary film whose greatest adornment is its unwavering caution. This is evident in the interview with Ernst Paar, who describes the cowardice and hypocrisy he faced after his friend's death in a witty, almost cabaret-like manner. Wordy treasures that were nevertheless curtailed by Hiller and Neuwirth – so as not to unbalance the film inappropriately. “On Living, Loving, Dying”: something becomes visible in the individual fates; there are many stories about AIDS, and they cannot be reduced to the common denominator of a single story. Fortunately.

Christian Cargnelli, Falter