Windows on Monday

Windows on Monday - Montag kommen die Fenster

DIR Ulrich Köhler

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A new house in a new town could mean the beginning of a phase of domestic bliss for a small family. Nina, a doctor, has taken a few days off. Her husband Frieder is busy laying tiles, while their daughter Charlotte plays in her new room. But Nina is having her doubts; she stands about in the half-empty rooms, feeling thoroughly alienated. Suddenly, without saying a word, she decides to leave - Berlin film festival

Paying a visit at first to her brother who is staying in their parents’ holiday home, Nina wanders aimlessly about the surreally mountainous landscape. She winds up with an ageing tennis star at a hotel for sports enthusiasts – an alien-looking concrete structure from another age. Nina’s attempt to break out of her existence isn’t some kind of existential revolt. It’s simply a brief encounter between two people who don’t seem to fit in. Never­the­less, step by step, a somnambulant Nina makes her way back to her own family.
The windows that arrive on Monday turn out to be the wrong ones – but it’s no tragedy. In fact, there’s nothing at all tragic about Nina and Frieder’s life together. Not even Frieder’s desperate attempt to seek refuge in an ex-girlfriend’s bed. The real tragedy is that, although Nina realises all of this, like a fish out of water, she is utterly incapable of doing anything about it.

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The term "exquisite" is largely insufficient here. Ulrich Koehler has accomplished nothing less than a cinematic masterpiece with WINDOWS ON Monday; a patient and poetic look at the linear nature of human behavior, as well as an observation on the anatomy of the relationship between man and woman disclosed elegantly in images that have the tonal and luminary texture of classical paintings. Rather than rely on expository dialog to detail the all-too-common predictable series of plot-points that plague most of modern cinema, this filmmaker and his astonishing cast instead illustrate the power of subtlety within a story that never ceases to captivate and fascinate; a choice that rings very true and very human (without losing an extremely unique dreamlike quality that saturates the film as well). Tarkovsky, Antonioni and Kieslowski come to mind here, although Koehler maintains a style all his own. Those with small attention spans and little patience for a film that refuses to spell everything out explicitly to its audience will doubtlessly be frustrated with WINDOWS ON Monday. The fact is, life itself is not predictable, nor is it always fast-paced; it is sometimes calm, yet full of confusion, contradiction, uncertainty and distraction. And, as Koehler masterfully demonstrates, love is also made up of such things. Both humorous and austere, surreal yet human, vulnerable and bold…this is true cinema, and truly art.