Being Towards Death review – Chinese hospital comedy drama uses plucky patients to ask big questions

A debt-laden caregiver attempting suicide is the catalyst for him finding new meaning to life from a ward of terminally ill patients in touching ensemble drama

‘You know the law of entropy? Life is a process of constant decay,” ssays a doctor in this Chinese hospital comedy drama – but not that you’d know it from the gabbling, frenetic first half-hour of director Chen Sicheng’s death-fixated film. Being Towards Death kicks off with caregiver Xiaobing (Jiang Long) about to throw himself off the roof because, after a scheme to flog his superiors care robots fails, he’s in hock to triad loan sharks. Thankfully the film later settles into an intermittently touching ensemble drama with a meta tint; albeit one that doesn’t fully grasp the profundities it’s aiming for.

Hauled back from the ledge, Xiaobing is talked by the hospital director into leading a project studying mental health interventions in terminal cancer care. So he finds himself among the “Ward 10 Fearless Squad”, a group of patients whose outlook is as plucky as their diagnoses are grim. Before long, he has co-opted film director Dao (Wang Zichuan) to make a documentary about his roomies, including bullish property mogul Mau (Cai Ming), browbeaten first son Bowen (Huang Yi) and fib-spinning poppet, Xiaobing (Ye Quanxi) – nicknamed Little Bing.