Death of a Superhero

Donald is fifteen and in treatment for cancer. He does not spend his time in hospital; he draws. His comic has an invincible hero and against him a villain who works with a needle; the villain kills everything he touches. His family takes him to psychologists and he drives them all away. Then Dr Adrian King arrives, and in the first session he does not try to give the boy advice. Around the same time Donald meets Shelly. There is one concrete thing he wants to do before he dies and he tells nobody. Ian Fitzgibbon directs. Thomas Brodie-Sangster, Andy Serkis, Michael McElhatton and Sharon Horgan are in the cast. It is an Irish and German co-production. The film is adapted from a novel by Anthony McCarten. The comic the boy draws is given as animation and makes a separate layer inside the narrative. The matter it treats is the impossibility of talking about death; the film works not on the illness but on the difficulty of speaking about it. The doctor played by Andy Serkis is what holds the film together and the part is not a type. The narrative shows the family too; the parents' own helplessness is a separate line. The film does not fall into emotional exploitation and keeps its humour. The narrative also takes up teenage sexuality openly. The ending promises no recovery. Its limit is predictability; the setup is familiar, some scenes are stock, and the ending is what you expect. Who it is for: viewers who like coming of age drama and stories about illness. Who it is not for: it is sad, predictable, and the ending bitter.