Vier minuten (4 minutes)

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.