Run Lola Run

Winner of the Audience and Best film award at the Sundance Film Festival Best film Best Supporting Actress Best Supporting Actor, Best Director at the German Film Festival, Bambi Award among many other. Run Lola Run is set against the grungy urban scene scape of Berlin with an intensive bass driven techno soundtrack composed by writer and director Tom Tykwer. Run Lola Run is pounding with kinetic energy and a case of Red Bull, like a marathon inside a rave inside a fusion reactor. This moving not only takes hold of your senses in the way of a roller coaster but hypnotizing you your brain and spirit with tripping free form flashes of anticipation, panic, passion, desperation, hesitation, fear and fervor that is at once utterly exhilarating and absolutely exhausting.

Run Lola Run or Lola rennt(German), a film which lasts approximately 80 minutes in the English version, is formally divided into four parts: a three minute philosophical preface which serves to introduce the leading thesis of circularity and repetition; a 29 minute subjective flashback thought out by the main character (Lola); a 20 minute “alternative” and equally subjective flashback envisioned by the secondary character (Manni); and a 22 minute “objective” (re)telling from the point of view of the camera, which freezes suddenly at the moment Lola is about to smile. The last three minutes of the film show the credits, which appear “down” instead of “up.” Likewise, the word “Ende” appears slowly from right to left, forcing one to read against what is customary. This unusual form of showing the credits in effect connects the end quite logically to the preface, which begins with a quote from T.S. Eliot and S. Herberger about returning to one's point of original departure, for after the game is before the game, and the only fact is that the ball is round and the game lasts 90 minutes: “Everything else is pure theory.”

It's startling to realize that here we are, 25 minutes into the film, and already it seems as if there's no more story possible. Lola receives a phone call from her panic-stricken boyfriend, Mani, a money runner for a trigger happy drug dealer. He has lost 100,000 Deusche-mark. If he produce the coin within 20 minutes, he's dead. Lola bein his only hope, promises to be there with the money, but what can she do? She must RUN! The key image is that of Lola running. Over and over, Lola dashes across the screen, or sprints along the camera, which travels at equal speed. The cumulative effect is exhilarating, allowing views to read their own sense of passion and purpose into Lola's velocity as she dashes to save her lover. Playing on realism things don't work out quite as she hoped, though, and when she reaches Manni at noon the end is... well the result of the adventure is just about as tragic as a Shakespeare's tale. But then, with a kind of breathtaking dare, Tykwer all but flashes on the screen”Game Over”- insert 2 coins to continue”. You slowly realize the story is starting over with two more perspectives to go. The film replays from the end of Manni's phone call and does it all a second time then a third, examining how the smallest, split-second variations in circumstances can drastically change a person's whole lie. Each sequence visits the same territory but varies dramatically in the most minute ways-even the stranger Lola encounters are the same. Although their flash forwards are not, leading to wildly different out comes for Lola frantic rescue effort.

The shots that anticipate the final reunion between Lola and Manni are elegantly shown by means of four enthralling vertical split scenes. In the first one, a stationary Manni is shown at the Bolle store while a fast-moving Lola is still trying to reach him before he enters the store to steal the money. In the second one, Manni is placed on the left frame and Lola on the right one; slowly, a horizontal third scene showing a clock is introduced from below, thus creating a three-way split scene. In the third split scene one views, to the left, a blurry medium-shot of Manni looking at a clear full shot of Lola in the distance; and to the right, a blurry medium shot of Lola looking at a clear full shot of Manni. In the fourth split scene, one sees a reverse angle medium shot of Manni to the left and a frontal medium shot of Lola to the right. The right frame (which contains the image of Lola) then shifts to the left and wipes the left frame (which contains Manni's image). Although this wipe will have disastrous consequences for one of the main characters, the vertical split scenes also join momentarily the lovers, who are otherwise spatially and temporally removed from each other. The horizontal intrusions of a clock in the split scenes add stress and suspense to the ongoing situations.