Slow pace in the most part of the movie.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

May Contain Spoilers!!!There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you " -Maya AngelouTwo women , stigma from the past, and a piano. That is all what the writer and director Chris Kraus needed to create a double miracle, cinematic and musical . Traude Krüger, the elderly piano teacher , a prisoner of the past, a captive of her own being ,and Jenny the condemned prisoner accused of a hideous crime will form a bond of invulnerable friendship on the tunes of a piano keys in one of Germany's women penitentiaries. Traude will desperately try to change the indignant manners and the troublesome behavior of the young angry girl, she will perceive an exceptional talent, a prodigy, in her and will try to crystallize it on her own terms, attempting not to make her waste such sensibility overshadowed by anger and rebellion. She'll summon her to keep her trust in somebody again , a confidential, to express her fervent feelings , what burdens her heart all through teaching her classic pieces of timeless composers, while Jenny will try to unleash her feeling through a short dance - handcuffed- or a stolen kiss , or by playing a modern pieces of music that echoes what is going on inside her of piercing noises and feelings. She'll find a cure for her tortured soul, that's when Traude, involuntarily, will open to Jenny the gates of her heart widely to unveil the secret that haunted her sleep for more than forty years, the secret which made her the lonely "sinister" she is today that made her abandon the world and give up all its pleasures, to find refuge and solace in Jenny. Both women will open up to each other facing their worst fears, pushing salt on each others' wounds. Here the director chose to summarize all of these clashes of the soul with the impulsion of four minutes, and four hasty minutes only.. that will leave its impact on the viewer's mind for days, causing a rhapsody to the ears , to replay the closing scene for more than ten times , amazed by what what the eye beholds and ear hearkens, swooned by the majestic music which the fingertips of a young rebellious woman plays.The film was nominated for an academy award for best foreign film

'Four minutes' is a 2006 German movie about a young woman prisoner Jenny and her old piano teacher Kruger. While the music class part by part the past stories of these women reveal to us. The flashback reveals that this prison used to be a hospital where the old piano teacher worked and her affair with another nurse. And another flashback about Jenny and her difficulty earlier life she went through. As a talented, Jenny is also the rough and tough with her inmates. Like all the prison story here too there be a trouble giving enemy and a tough warden who always eye on her. Their's target is Jenny, to stop her from taking piano lessons and entering the competition.Jenny was a musical prodigy and her initial portions of the story were portrayed as she's sorta some rebellion. There were many scenes I just don't get it like the security provided for Jenny during she was taken for the contest on the outside. And I don't know why the story had some racism remarks on Afro-European music in a couple of scenes and it never explained anywhere later. I guess those days are like that especially in Nazi Germany.Still I felt both the two main characters were not explained well especially Jenny's past were mostly told as a story than what we are expected to see as the actual one. In Kruger case it was different it showed the main portions of her flashbacks to match it with preset of her. The last four minutes of the movie are what represents the title before the credit rolls up. That was a grand finale for a movie with a story like this. The end scene was kinda good like the movies 'Sound of Noise' or 'August Rush'.8/10

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.

The premise of this movie is great (if not super original), and the acting is outstanding. But as a whole this movie is a bit of a disappointment. I think my main problem with the film is the editing. The editor seems restless with the slow pace of the scenes and tries to speed things up by hard cutting. But this just leads to the fact that each scene ends at the very point where it starts getting interesting. The jumping back and forth between the subplot (the piano teachers love story in the past) and the main plot (the same teacher teaching a young criminal to play) is often confusing and creates distance to the viewer. The subplot also doesn't really tie in to the main plot and should probably have been left out altogether. The final scene where the girl triumphantly plays the piano would have been so much more efficient and touching if shot in just one long take, now the editor tries to compete with the girl's virtuous skills and again, it creates distance and makes the whole sequence feel fake and pompous. I still recommend this film because of the great actors and a nice story.