Four Minutes (2006)

Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

Powerful

Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

4 Minutes (2006)This is the German "Four Minutes" and it's an intense look at a woman's prison and a prisoner who has a gift for playing piano. And then about an older woman who had some undisclosed issues in her past (during WWII) and is now steadfastly teaching piano in the prison. Music contests come along, and the inmate fights all the odds to compete.That's the surface. Deeper and more interesting are the troubled psyches of the two leads, the younger woman vitriolic and intense (and quite believable), the older woman steely and cold and almost cruel. That they come to terms with one another is a given, sort of (that's what movies typically do), but how that turns on a couple of spectacular (and a little sensationalist) twists at the ends is pretty rousing. There is great music, conflicts with Nazi and racist overtones, lesbianism, and of course, a rough and tumble prison world in contemporary Germany. That's enough for any good film. It makes it moving and the high stakes are somehow justified by the intense acting. It breaks conventions within a larger cliché of the heroine struggling against the odds. It has an odd and disturbing element about innocence, and this leads further into the psychology of the inmate, but it isn't quite resolved. But it's all really interesting and provocative. You will probably cheer a little by the end, too.

I guess this movie is specially interesting for people who love music, good acting and intelligent stories. Two women, and old piano teacher and a young prodigy girl (the girl happens to be in prison and she is in a very, very bad mood, as you could expect) got involved in a relationship of teaching and learning. But this is not the typical movie about how music could save souls and make everybody happy and cheerful at the end, against all odds: complicated people and complicated problems remains complicated, of course, and music is a window to our tormented souls, not a sleeping pill or a wonderful happiness-tonic. Highly recommended. Specially the young actress who plays Jenny, a wild beauty with incredible eyes and full of passion.

This film lost me near the beginning when old Traude refuses to deal with Jenny's messy hands during the interviews with new students. I mean, Traude is supposed to be a woman who is devoted to music and who wants to help female inmates of a prison to learn piano. And she turns Jenny away because she plays "Negro music" and has filthy hands? Couldn't Chris Block, the writer and director, have come up with a more realistic reason for Jenny to bash Mutze nearly to death, thus turning him from what was initially a sympathetic character into a jailer out for revenge? The wartime lesbian subplot didn't add anything to the main plot. If anything, it seemed gratuitous. How could a woman who was daring enough to love another woman under the gaze of Nazis, come to hate "Negro Music"? These two characteristics don't seem to fit together.The other weird, if not gratuitous, inclusion was the incest subplot between Jenny and her father. Aside from Jenny's outbursts, it was handled vaguely, as it it were no more important than the refusal (or inability) of Mutze's daughter to curtsy to Traude.And the music drove me crazy. The Mozart and Schubert pieces have been played to death. Surely a couple of more interesting études out of the thousands upon thousands that have been written by hundreds of composers could have relieved the boredom of hearing these hackneyed tunes over and over for the entire length of the film.I came to this film expecting to like it, which is why I'm so bloody disgusted. But by the time the last plot contrivance was thrown at us: Jenny finding a bottle of her detested father's favourite booze at Traude's place and thus setting up a melodramatic bellowfest, not even the heralded last "vier minuten" could save it.

This movie just left me dizzy for two days after seeing it - I did not know how to really feel about it or its morale (if there was indeed any), I could not pinpoint what touched be so strongly, all I can say that this movie had really heavy impact on me. There is something incredibly charming about the main characters and their extreme circumstances is what gives the film the force to punch through all your shells and find the right strings of your soul to play on.Frankly, this movie actually has several major weak points - especially the script is full of so many gaping holes and the scenes fit together just barely for the plot to roughly work on the global scale. But this is the kind of movie where you just don't really care how believable the story is as long as you can follow it through: you just want to embrace yourself in the massively dark atmosphere built by excellent visuals and unforgettable music. I guess the only superlative left to describe the acting of the two main actresses is "awesome"...This movie makes for a very dark watch, with few quite violent scenes - but if you think you can handle it, be sure to go for it if you get your hands on it. Normally, with so problematic script I wouldn't give a movie more than 6/10, but here the rest works together so well that I can't make myself to give less than 9.