4/5 German Angst
  by Amos Lassen (Little Rock, Arkansas)
"Four Windows"
German Angst
Amos Lassen
"Four Windows" is a German drama that looks at the family and the relationships therein. It is divided into four acts--one for each family member; mother (Margarita Broich), a high strung woman, father (Thorsten Merten), a man of undertainly, son (Frank Droese), a sexually confused teen, and daughter (Theresa Scholze), an angry girl. Each of the family members has a secret and each cries for life. They can't live together and they can't exist apart.
Director Christian Moris Muller looks at what makes up the modern German family and what he finds is four people who each hold some kind of secret, each member of the family has his own face, each screams for life. They want to get away from each other but cannot live apart and so they hang on tightly. The more they are together, the more the atmosphere around them stays quiet. When the cracks in the family structure widen, a secret that is inescapable is exposed.
This is an unusual film in that it tends to polarize those that watch it because it offers so much for self-reflection. Each person who sees the film can interpret it differently and it is easy to integrate one's own experience into the film.
Even with no violence this is a brutal film but it looks at the brutality that is around us everyday yet is inexplainable. The father is a man who once enjoyed life but he is now in a rut and cannot seem to find a way out. The mother is simply a mother and she realizes how little she knows her children. The son lives in his own world, dtrams a lot and just does his own thing. The daughter has to live with the abuse of her father and she seems to have lost whatever direction she had in her life. Together they are a family that is not much of a family.
There is a great deal going on in the movie and the cast is excellent all around. We learn about what makes a family and the windows of the title remind us that the family is the sum of its parts.