Run Lola Run

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Run Lola Run (original German title Lola rennt, which translates to Lola runs or Lola is running) is a 1998 film by German screenwriter and director Tom Tykwer, starring Franka Potente as Lola.

It is an unconventional film, in its nonlinearity: it covers the same twenty-minute span of time three times over, each differing in small details that in turn lead the story to radically different outcomes. The script follows a spiral structure. Spirals are also frequently used as a visual motif, partially as an homage to Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo, which Tykwer admires. The film, particularly with its time limit and "multiple lives" concept, also owes a clear debt to Polish director Krzysztof Kieślowski, who explored the theme in films such as Blind Chance, The Double Life of Véronique, and Three Colors: Red. Tykwer would go on to direct Heaven, which Kieślowski had planned as his next film, after Kieślowski's death.

While most German films in English speaking countries are subtitled, this film is one of the few German films to have been dubbed into English, alongside The Princess and the Warrior, Anatomy, Der Schuh des Manitu and Das Boot. However, the English dub was widely criticised, as it does not mesh well with the more frentic prose of the original German. It is generally recommended to watch the original German version instead.

1 Synopsis
2 References
3 Run Lola Run in popular culture
4 Cast list
5 External links

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Synopsis

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Lola's boyfriend, Manni, is involved in a smuggling operation. Manni's final task in a particular job is to transport 100,000 marks to his boss Ronnie. Lola is supposed to drive Manni to the meeting, but her moped has been stolen. Manni resorts to public transportation when Lola doesn't appear, but he accidentally leaves the money on a subway train, where it is found by a homeless person. Manni places a frantic phone call to Lola and explains the situation: he will certainly be killed if he doesn't have the money when he meets Ronnie at noon. Lola vows to find the money by then, but noon is only twenty minutes away. It is at this point that the alternate-realities sequence begins.

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First Reality - With little time and no vehicle, Lola runs through the streets of Berlin to get to her father's bank, trying to get money from him. He refuses, explaining that he is not her real father. She and Manni rob a grocery store, and Lola is accidentally shot by a police officer shortly afterward.

Second Reality - As she dies, the film suddenly seems to start over; it jumps back to the end of her phone call from Manni, and again she tries to get the money from her father. However, a small detail near the beginning changes, and so the outcome is wildly different: she ends up robbing her father's bank at gunpoint. She brings the money to Manni, but he is run down by an ambulance as he crosses the street.

Third Reality - The story starts a third time. She gets to her father's bank only to see him driving away. She then runs through the town, asking for divine help. She comes to a casino, gets a single 100-mark chip, and finds a roulette table. She bets on 20 and wins. She leaves her winnings on 20 for the next spin, winning again. She has the money, but she still has to catch up with Manni by noon. She hitches a ride in an ambulance, which is carrying a security guard from her father's bank, who has apparently suffered a heart attack. Lola says "I'll stay with him," and holds the man's hand, and moments later he starts to recover to a normal heart rate. Her puzzling statement is never explained in the film. Meanwhile, Manni has borrowed a phonecard from a blind woman to make a phone call seeking a loan. He returns the phone card, but this time, unlike in the previous two sequences, he thanks her. She then gestures with her head, and Manni looks up to notice the bum with his money riding by on a bicycle. Manni is successful in chasing down the bum, recovering his money, and delivering it to Ronnie. The movie ends with Manni asking Lola what's in her bag.

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Throughout the film, Lola bumps into people, talks to them, or passes them by entirely. Details of that person's future are subsequently shown in a series of still frames. The futures are widely divergent from encounter to encounter. In one scenario, a woman whom Lola accidentally bumps into wins the lottery and becomes rich; in a different scenario, she remains poor and her child is taken away by social workers. The encounters with Lola differ only slightly, so the vastly changed futures in the "flash forwards" are apparently an example of the butterfly effect. The movie itself starts from some questions referring to unpredictability of the world. And it portrays the chaotic nature of the world beautifully. It shows what difference it will make to the entire world in difference of one second for one person to start running.

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References

The most notable references in this film are to the film Vertigo by filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock. Besides the camera work, a very specific reference to Vertigo is the painting on the back wall of the casino. Tykwer disliked the empty space on the wall behind the roulette table and commissioned production designer Alexander Manasse to paint a picture of Kim Novak as she appeared in Vertigo. Manasse could not remember what she looked like in the film and so decided to paint her from behind. The painting took fifteen minutes to complete.

Other movies are referenced more obliquely. The store robbery scene is sometimes described as an homage to Pulp Fiction or any number of Bonnie and Clyde-style tales.

There are also several references to German culture in the film. The most notable is the use of Hans Paetsch as a narrator for the scene. Paetsch is a very famous narrator of children’s stories in Germany, whose voice anyone who'd listened to his children’s stories growing up would recognize. Two quotes by German football legend Sepp Herberger, "The ball is round" and "The game lasts 90 minutes", are spoken by the guard in the first scene in the film. Another quote by Herberger, "After the game is before the game", is featured at the beginning of the opening sequence.

The soundtrack of the film, also by Tykwer, includes numerous musical quotations of the sustained string chords of "The Unanswered Question", an early 20th century chamber ensemble work by United States composer Charles Ives. In the original work, the chords are meant to represent the music of the spheres.

It's possible to "read" this movie as a sort of cautionary tale for women. In the first scenario, Lola ends up dead, because she allowed her boyfriend to make her responsible for his goof (he left the bag of cash from the drug deal on a subway car). She also childishly runs to her father and then helplessly cries when he won't help her. She gets sucked into Manni's robbery of a store, and then she is shot by police. A lot of women who are in prison now (or dead) got that way because they felt they had to help their drug-dealing boyfriends.

In the second scenario, Lola does a little better. She still allows Manni to make her responsible for his mistakes, and again, he just waits passively at the phone booth for her to rescue him, but this time, she is much more assertive in dealing with her father. She robs his bank, holding a gun to his head! Then she escapes, despite the fact that the bank is surrounded by police. But just as she reaches Manni, a truck runs him over, and he ends up dead. But at least she's not dead!

In the third scenario, both Manni and Lola act more responsibly. Manni actually does something to help himself instead of waiting passively and childishly for Lola to rescue him: he tracks down the homeless guy who has the cash and takes it back. Lola, for her part, doesn't rely on Daddy this time, but instead goes into a casino and legally acquires the 100,000 marks, using her powerful trademark scream to force the roulette wheel to do her bidding. By the time she finds Manni, he has solved his own problem already, and they are 100,000 marks richer because of her winnings.

At the beginning of the movie, Manni is childishly blaming Lola for his own mistake: "you weren't there with the moped, so I had to take a subway..." Lola tries to reason with him, but Manni is crying like a baby. Maybe that is why his name is Manni, "little man." She rescues him as a mother would rescue a child, at least in the first two scenarios.

In between the first and second scenarios, there's a "pillow talk" flashback, where Lola asks Manni if he really loves her, in an insecure and clingy way. This scene elucidates the nature of their relationship and explains why Lola felt she needed to rescue Manni: she is not very confident and feels unloveable, perhaps in part because of her distant and self-absorbed parents, so she will go to any lengths, even risking her life, for Manni. But between the second and third scenarios, in a similar "pillow talk" flashback, it is Manni who is the insecure one, worried about what Lola would do if he died: would she quickly get another boyfriend and forget him? She matter-of-factly ends this silly conversation by saying, "Manni, you're not dead yet." Lola is strengthening before our eyes, and in the third scenario, she does the right thing.

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Run Lola Run in popular culture

The Simpsons episode "Trilogy of Error" makes clear references to the movie. The episode "Run, Gary, Run" from the series Early Edition also features a similar plot.

The triple timeline approach was used in an episode of Johnny Bravo, which also including pictures of people's possible lives.

The music video for Quarashi's "Mr. Jinx" was an homage to the movie, starring Hössi Olafsson, one of the members of the Icelandic rap group, as himself, trying to get to a Quarashi gig at a club on time.

The music video for Yellowcard's "Ocean Avenue" also features alternate timelines as frontman Ryan Key chases after a woman who has stolen a briefcase from him as he is pursued by two thugs who are actually members of the band.

Some of the music in the 2002 film The Bourne Identity is from Run Lola Run (coincidentally also starring Franka Potente).

It could be argued that some of Jennifer Garner's earlier outfits in the television hit, Alias, were inspired by the film. In the pilot she sports bright red hair and runs to throbbing techno music on the streets of Berlin. Another outfit consisting of bright blue hair and leather also seems like an homage. Although unconfirmed, J. J. Abrams has been quoted as saying he listened to the soundtrack for Run Lola Run while writing some early episodes.

Another film from the same year as Run Lola Run that explores parallel universes is Peter Howitt's Sliding Doors, starring Gwyneth Paltrow. A similar fragmented, parallel approach to time (though the layers are far more interlaced) is also used in Jaco Van Dormael's Toto le Héros.

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