There’s a bizarre morality at work in Four Minutes: the film at once idolizes the notion of ‘natural talent’, and compartmentalizes it away from the rest of its troubled characters’ defining attributes.
Fetishizing this abstract notion further, the movie then posits a series of scenarios in which its leads can be mean-spirited, weak-willed, even violent; but ultimately redeemed by what seems a hazily-defined, worryingly impractical conception of Genius.
For while the pic restricts itself almost totally to the one (almost intensely-unphotogenic , yet pleasantly idiosyncratic) metropolitan prison location, the division here isn’t between good people and bad, officious and industrious; it’s between those who Have this mysterious spirit and those who Haven’t. ‘Talent’ becomes a clear analog for the beauty in truth, the truth in beauty.
Where this doesn’t matter, of course, is in the doing: for the film’s two-hour duration, these rules work perfectly. Its leads, carrying the picture’s weight ably, are tasked with a difficult sell: providing well-rounded characters animated by a higher purpose, a search for this quizzical elixir.
In the film’s best moments, there’s an energy at work that can only be called sublime: a persuasive anima infusing performance and tone alike with exactly that which the picture would have us grudgingly embrace.
A notion, once again, of Genius as it’s literally defined: the act of moving with a higher, purer spirit, one that elevates and redeems narrative and character alike.
