the m0vie blog

I really do have a great deal of affection for Run Lola Run, as a highly energetic and stylishly executed piece of cinema. It’s hard to think of a movie that can match the sheer intensity of the assault that the opening few moments make upon your senses, as the images flash across the screen, the heavy dance soundtrack kicks to life, and the camera dances and cuts like there’s no tomorrow. It’s a shame that the movie can’t really maintain that wonderful pace for the rest of its runtime, but perhaps it’s too much to ask for an eighty-minute sprint.

Betting it all on red...

The idea is fundamentally simple. Lola’s life is something of a game. The objective is to get 100,000 marks in twenty minutes in order to save her boyfriend’s life. Everything else is up to her. The film borrows a quote from German footballer Sepp Herberger about the great game: “The ball is round, the game lasts 90 minutes, everything else is pure theory.” There’s something similar here. The movie opens with a thoughtful monologue on the nature of humanity, and our capacity to over-complicate things with what Lola’s boyfriend Manni describes as “rather stupid questions.” The film’s central point – with Lola having twenty minutes each time to complete her objective before the game starts again – is that it’s possible to waste too much time contemplating, instead of living.

The film never quite explains what exactly is happening – how Lola is granted another shot at this particular day, and another chance to play things out – but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. The more logical amongst us might wonder, for example, how Lola can retain knowledge about how to switch the safety off on gun across two separate attempts, but that’s just “pure theory.”It’s more fascinating to watch Lola attempt to reach her objective, filmed and managed with a very precise and meticulous care.

A couple of uncommon criminals...

“You said, ‘love can do anything.’ So find 100,000 marks in 20 minutes.”

– Manni

“Life’s crazy sometimes, isn’t it?” a bum asks at one point, and it really is. The film suggests that any number of external and unrelated factors may impact and distort our own goals – as illustrated by the snapshots we get into the random people Lola bumps into on her sprint. Each time, the future of these three people plays out in a radically different manner, impacted by any number of subtle and almost imperceptible variables. Due to factors outside of their control, these random by-standers are as likely to end up dead as they are to end up rich, such is the impact of the world’s ever-shifting numbers game (an inconsistency created by any number of slight differences in input from one moment to the next).

For example, the exact moment of Lola’s arrival during a conversation between her father and his mistress leads to several completely different outcomes – if one more sentence had been uttered, things might have played out differently. Hell, Lola contemplates something similar, lying in bed with Manni. When Manni remarks she’s “the best girl”, she wonders if it’s just circumstance that lead shim to say that. “What if you never met me?” she asks, “You’d be telling the same thing to someone else.” It’s interesting to think about that idea – is love something created by the forces of chance and luck, or is it something that overcomes it? While the movie seems to suggest it’s futile to contemplate how or why any of this is happening, I tend to believe that it’s “love”that is giving Lola and Manni these opportunities to do it all again. I have no idea how or why, but it makes as much sense as anything.

Her name is Lola...

That said, the film isn’t nearly as serious as I make it sound. Instead, director Tom Tykwer uses any number of crazy editing techniques to give the film a wonderful sense of life. The pulse soundtrack and rapid cuts help add a strange angle to the film, and there’s a sense that the director isn’t really playing by any set rulebook nas events play out, which is exhilarating. However, it does settle down a bit after a fantastic opening ten minutes (where brilliantly-staged flashbacks explain how we came to this set of events), but there’s always a central drive to the film that really helps it work.

Run Lola Run isn’t necessarily a masterpiece, perhaps too focused on superficial technique instead of an emotionally-engaging set of characters or circumstances, but that’s not a bad thing. I don’t know that much about Lola or Manni by the end of the film, but that’s not really the point of it all. I’ve just enjoyed the ride, quite a lot. And I have a bit of pre-destination theory to digest and think about.

Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: arts, film, Filmmaking, games, Movie, Movies, non-review review, review, Run Lola Run, Sepp Herberger, Tom Tykwer |