remembering the films that the audience forgot
“I didn’t read reviews earlier in my career, but I read them now as I’m older. I read them all.”
— Steven Spielberg
Four Minutes (Vier Minuten) is about an elderly piano teacher who trains a young convict at a women's penitentiary. Wait, don't go!!! I know what you’re thinking... It’s Dangerous Minds meets Freedom Writers meets (insert names of any of the dozen other movies where troubled youth are helped by a teach/mentor and everything turns out good in the end). This isn't that though...
Read MoreBetween 2001 and 2005, director Oliver Hirschbiegel made four films in his native Germany - two of which were the pretty good Das Experiment and the great Downfall (I haven't seen the other two). Then in 2007 he faltered hard with his first english language film, the not good movie that was The Invasion.
Thankfully he got back up on the horse and in 2009 delivered Five Minutes Of Heaven, a film about truth and reconciliation that, in a way, is a reconciliation of its own with fans of Hirschbiegel who had sat through The Invasion - okay, so that's me being a bit over dramatic, but I liked the metaphor so I went with it.
Read MoreWe are an audience that has seen it all. We know the conventions of genres and the way things generally play out from having been exposed to decades of films and film making. We are a generation that knows it and has no problem telling people that we know it. So, what do film makers do for audiences like that? Well, they show us that they know it also.
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