Run Lola Run
Written and Directed by Tom Tykwer
Starring: Franka Potente, Moritz Bleibtreu, Herbert Knaup, Nina Petri
What happens?
To save her boyfriend’s life Lola must run…a lot.
In a culture where video store staff must inform a customer if their choice is subtitled, at which point said customer looks disgusted and rushes to grab the last copy of Shark Attack 2, world cinema is stuck between a rock and a dumb place.
Add the word “Germany”, a country not renowned for its groundbreaking cinema, and any film burdened with the tag is dead in the water, right? Not this time. Run Lola Run isn’t just good: it has barged its way into many a movie buff’s top twenty without so much as a “bitte” or a “danke schon”.
Director Tom Tykwer has made a movie that gives the audience as much time to stop and take a breath as Lola herself; which is to say none at all. The film rushes from scene to scene as Lola attempts to save her boyfriend from a seemingly inevitable fate and we have no choice but to pelt along with her.
Tykwer uses the wide expanse of his setting to great effect, his camera travelling high above the city, showing the hopelessness of Lola’s chase, and juxtaposing this space with his protagonist’s restrictions. She is boxed into a situation over which she has even less control than she thinks, constricted into a twenty-minute timeframe, moved like a chess piece by the actions of those around her.
Tykwer also uses the different modes of transport in the city to show the futility of Lola’s chase. In the course of the film she is overtaken by a bike, car, ambulance and train, indicating that she has to hope fate is on her side if she wishes to succeed. The film is a commentary on the unpredictability of life, and it makes us all the more eager to find out what does or doesn’t happen next.
As Lola, Franka Potente is a sensation. While the unending streets fail to present her with a dead end physically, she is halted mentally by her frustration and the revelations of other “minor” characters. But even when she is still, Potente gives the impression of movement; her agonised face searching for a solution, her eyes racing.
It is an astounding feat by Tykwer that those passing her appear to be moving slower than she is even when she stands still.
From the animated sequences that introduce each new beginning, to the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it editing that chronicles the cause and effect that is at the core of the movie, this could easily be dismissed as boys with toys on speed. But it is so much more than that.
Despite the cartoon-like appearance of his heroine and the rollercoaster camera work, Lola genuinely endears herself to the audience. Behind her shocking red locks Potente brings real emotions to a role that often requires conviction through actions rather than words. After all, this is a comic strip world where words play second fiddle to pictures for long periods of the movie. But that is not to its detriment; in fact it makes it all the more engaging.
Throughout the movie the camera slows to rest on random passers-by, suggesting that any one of them could be the eventual hero or villain, each with the power to change Lola’s fate. It is the butterfly theory with techno music, and that is where the movie works where others would fail: through its sound.
In a film where pace is so important the music does an amazing job in pushing the action - and the heroine - forward. The fast, pumping beat mimics Lola’s racing heart as the soundtrack forces the action into overload. Similarly, as the music slows so does Lola’s pace. In fact, the music seems to be the real dialogue of the piece, demonstrating a plethora of emotions through its varying pace and tone.
Whether the movie is a portrait of life’s complexities, a dissection of the various ways each individual existence could have been had a stranger waited a second longer to speak, or the refusal of the soul to accept failure, it is an amazing piece of work; and the next time someone lays it on the counter, Blockbuster staff would do well to keep quiet about the subtitles.
Verdict: A phenomenal piece of film-making. Original, exciting and this close to perfection: 5 out of 5.
By Vincent Ralph email
[ all Features stories ]