Here is part of a review of Run Lola Run (Lola Rennt in German):Tom Tykwer's Lola rennt: A Blueprint of Millennial Berlin
Margit Sinka
During one week in September 1998, Tom Tykwer's Lola rennt, a low budget film costing slightly more than three million German Marks, suddenly transformed a particularly quixotic German dream into reality: A German film, rather than a Hollywood production, garnered the largest number of moviegoers. Only mildly less astonishing, reviews of Lola rennt in the major dailies throughout Germany consisted mainly of generous praise. The relief at not having to comment on yet another specimen of the Cola Light, middle class relationship comedies that had proliferated in recent years was palpable, as was the amazement that a German film could be so incredibly fast-paced and such sheer fun to watch.
"Chaos, Verwirrung, Liebe, Tod," proclaims the movie flyer distributed to Berlin audiences in the fall of 1998. And the film, set in Berlin, indeed contains plenty of each in its short, eighty-one minutes. Yet its main plot, unfolding in a mere twenty minutes and then repeated in two additional twenty-minute segments with only slight, though crucial variations, is surprisingly simple. Receiving a frantic phone call from her boyfriend Manni, located in a phone booth far away from her, Lola promises to come up with 100,000 Marks-the amount Manni needs to deliver to car racketeers for a successfully executed car smuggling deal, the same amount that he had carelessly left on a subway train in a reflex action to escape from policemen controlling passengers for tickets. Lola has exactly twenty minutes not only to locate this large sum but also to deliver it to the far-away Manni-that is, twenty minutes to prevent him from robbing a supermarket or twenty minutes to save his life, for his criminal boss would definitely kill him were he to show up empty-handed. Yes, an impossible task, Tykwer admits, gleefully adding that the film operates on the premise that "you have no chance, therefore use it." [1]
Not surprisingly, using the nonexistent chance, to speak with Tykwer, nets no rewards in the first twenty-minute segment. Lola's impassioned attempt to secure the money from her banker father fails. Rather than preventing Manni from carrying out the supermarket holdup, she ends up helping him with it. For good measure, she is accidentally killed by a policeman. But, resurrected for the film's second twenty-minute segment, Lola receives a second chance to accomplish precisely the same hopeless task she had assumed in the first. Though she now obtains the necessary money from the bank and reaches Manni within the allotted twenty minutes, her efforts are in vain. This time Manni is killed accidentally, but by a speeding ambulance rather than a policeman's bullet. Since either Lola's or Manni's death thwarts viewer longings for successful romance, Tykwer provides yet another round of the same twenty minutes, concluding it with the kind of utterly happy Hollywood ending most German directors would be too embarrassed to even contemplate. Manni succeeds in recouping the lost amount from the derelict who had taken it from the subway car and in delivering it to his boss on time. The 100,000 Marks that the speedy Lola obtains in a casino, likewise legitimately, can now be spent as the couple wishes.
All three versions of the plot are embedded in a chaos theory-tinged philosophical framework accentuating the demands of fate and the vagaries of chance. The outcome of each version is dependent on the seconds lost or gained by Lola's response to the first obstacles on her run, a nasty-looking youth and his growling dog situated at a staircase in the building where she lives. Quite likely because they represent the strictures of time, Tykwer calls them the messengers of fate. [2] In the first version, barely aware of their presence, Lola spurts past them. In the second, the youth trips her, causing her to fall down the stairs; in the third, perhaps aware of the danger in her path, Lola jumps over the dog. Regardless of the nature of Lola's response, each has a ripple effect on all other events in its segment.
Most German film critics did not valorize as a fresh idea the concept that the decisions we make in life, no matter how minute, have snowball effects on the rest of our lives (and on the lives of those crossing our path). The film's success [3] rested less on perceptions of its conceptual depth than on its immensely successful blend of image, motion, and sound as the flame-haired, brightly attired, somewhat punky-looking Lola, her attractive stomach tattoo often tantalizingly visible, rushes across Berlin landscapes, either dodging or bumping into obstacles in her all-or-nothing attempt to rescue Manni and their love. The incredibly kinetic energy she exudes on all of her three runs proves a match for the pulsating techno rhythms accompanying her, music marked by far more variety than the techno amalgams heard during Berlin's entire Love Parade. Responding to Tykwer's accomplished, playful use of a broad array of filming techniques with the same unrestrained admiration accorded to his Lola and the film's soundtrack, German cinema critics emphasized that Tykwer had not only created something new but had expanded the possibilities of the filmic medium itself. [4]
As in Germany, many U.S. reviews [5] express astonishment that a German film can be so enjoyable. Generally German cinema is "so wretchedly slow, so humorless, so audience-unfriendly," writes one commentator. [6] Perhaps precisely because German films are associated with adjectives such as "dour, dark and depressing," remarks an Australian critic, the marketing of Run Lola Run, as it is titled in English, has "skirted around the fact that it is a German film." [7] Despite its subtitles, others advise against stressing the German origin of the film: With its American style and pace, nothing is foreign about it; its appeal as universal as that of Titanic, it can be incorporated into any nationality. [8] Based on the statement he supplied for advertising purposes to the U.S. distributor Sony, Tykwer seems to concur: It could "just as easily be set in Peking, Helsinki or New York, the only thing that would change is the scenery, not the emotional dimension." [9]
When elaborating on Lola rennt's appeal for Americans, Tykwer stresses its universal theme (a tiny moment has immense repercussions), its romance aspects, and the emotional identification its main protagonists Manni and Lola generate. [10] For most Americans, however, Lola rennt's universal nature is attributable mainly to its innovative, even dazzling recycling of familiar elements of international youth culture (music, video games, interactive links). [11] The emotional identification with the main protagonists, on the other hand, is far less pronounced than in Germany. Manni, played by Moritz Bleibtreu, rarely elicits sympathies (Americans are unaware of his stature as youth idol in Germany), [12] and Lola is frequently faulted for her excessive devotion to such a loser. Thus the rationale for her relentless run to save Manni is called into question. The bedazzling filming techniques, concludes Janet Maslin of the New York Times, essentially camouflage the "pointless nature of the exercise." [13] Could it be that Lola rennt is not quite as universal as had been supposed and that it is more embedded in German culture than is readily apparent? [14] In the following comments, I will argue first for this position and then for the view that Lola rennt resonates, in particular, with some of the most prevalent Berlin discourses at the turn of the millennium. This Berlin connection, even if perceived only on a subconscious level, provides the film with a cultural relevance on its home territory that it can not possibly have for international audiences.
Discussion Topic:An obvious theme in the "Run Lola Run" is the concept of time and of changing time. Talk about how the editing of the film specifically adds to this theme, (besides the obvious answer that she goes back in time). Think about what techniques the director and editor use to manipulate time in the "Run Lola Run" and how these techniques are used to effect or add to the idea of time in the film.
