Excellent story! Chris Kraus made an
extraordinary choice combining the two actresses Hannah Herzsprung playing Jenny
von Loeben and Monica
Bleibtreu as Mrs. Kruger.
It all takes place in a women’s prison,
where Mrs. Kruger gives piano lessons to the inmates.
Mrs. Kruger’s first impression of
young Jenny is immediate rejection. She refuses to give lessons to a vulgar person
that makes her own hands sore, but then in a state of rage, after almost
beating an officer to death, young Jenny starts to play and Mrs. Kruger
reconsiders. Then she sees the girl’s potential.
Mrs. Kruger character is shown as a
senior teacher, very strict, with no respect for nothing but the beauty in
classical music. Her fascination of this young women, this uncommonly “wunder
kid” sort of, reminds her of a girl she used to know, a girl that she was in
love with, and sow killed. Young Jenny got stuck in this place in her younger
years. She was a victim of circumstances in life, abused by her father, sexually
and psychologically, got involved with some boy, and ends up in prison for
murder. There she got to a point where she doesn’t feel a thing for anything or
anybody, blunt her emotions. This is where the piano teacher steps in. She
offers Jenny guidance in making her better pianist, but not a better person. To
do that she must listens to everything Mrs. Kruger says and not wanting
anything in return. She specifically emphases the importance and beauty of
music and the sacrifice that she will have to make for it. Enrolling her to the
contest of young artist and working with her day by day, stage by stage, she
makes the deviant young woman realizes the significance in life itself. This
structure of bad young woman and old strict teacher became their thread in which
they both see a way out. The young one as a glance of hope and the old one, as
a way of leaving something worthwhile behind. As time goes by, they create a
bond, unbreakable one. Even though there are some problems with convincing the
warden to let her compete, Mrs. Kruger decides to act on her own anyway, and by
doing so she releases herself of guilt that she wears since her youth. She
didn’t do a thing then to save her love, but she is doing, correcting that
mistake now, by secretly transporting Jenny to the competition.
The competition itself means
freedom, for both, a moment of life, a pure pleasure, an explosion of emotions boiled
in 4 minutes. The one by giving (making) that explosion, and the other one by receiving
(achieving) it.
