| Run Lola Run | |
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Original German release poster |
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| Directed by | Tom Tykwer |
| Produced by | Stefan Arndt |
| Written by | Tom Tykwer |
| Narrated by | Hans Paetsch |
| Starring | Franka Potente Moritz Bleibtreu |
| Music by | Tom Tykwer Johnny Klimek Reinhold Heil |
| Cinematography | Frank Griebe |
| Editing by | Mathilde Bonnefoy |
| Studio | X-Filme Creative Pool |
| Distributed by | Sony Pictures Classics |
| Release date(s) | 20 August 1998 (Germany) 18 June 1999 (US) |
| Running time | 81 minutes |
| Country | Germany |
| Language | German |
| Budget | $1.75 million[1] |
| Box office | $14,533,173[1] |
Run Lola Run (German: Lola rennt, literally Lola Runs) is a 1998 German crime thriller film written and directed by Tom Tykwer and starring Franka Potente as Lola and Moritz Bleibtreu as Manni. The story follows a woman who needs to obtain 100,000 German marks in 20 minutes to save her boyfriend's life. The film's three scenarios are reminiscent of the 1981 Krzysztof Kieślowski film Blind Chance; following Kieślowski's death, Tykwer directed his planned film Heaven.
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The film begins with Lola (Franka Potente) receiving a phone call from her distraught boyfriend, Manni (Moritz Bleibtreu). He is a small-time criminal and has lost 100,000 marks belonging to his crime boss by accidentally leaving it on a train (Lola was supposed to pick him up, but her moped was stolen while she was buying cigarettes). After the doors of the train closed, he saw a homeless man pick up the bag of money but he was unable to get back onto the train before it left the station. Upon not seeing any trace of his money or the homeless man at the next station, Manni assumes the money is long gone.
Manni has to get the money within 20 minutes before his boss finds out, and plans to rob a nearby supermarket. Lola urges him to wait and tells him she will sort out the money. She decides to ask her father (Herbert Knaup), who is a bank manager.
The main part of the film is divided in three "runs". Each run starts from the same situation but develops differently and has a different outcome. Each run contains various flash-forward sequences, showing how the lives of the people that Lola bumps into develop after the encounter. In each run, those people are affected in different ways.
Lola starts running and encounters a punk with a dog in the staircase. The dog growls at her, causing her to sprint faster. Lola runs through the streets of Berlin towards her father's bank. On her way, she causes a man (who is later shown to be her father's colleague) to be involved in a small car accident. When she arrives at the bank, Lola's father refuses to give her any money, telling her that he feels unappreciated at home, that he is leaving Lola and her mother for his mistress who is expecting his child and that he is not Lola's real father. Lola runs on to meet Manni, arriving a few moments after the deadline. Manni's robbery is already in progress; Lola decides to help him rob the store. The two flee on foot afterwards but find themselves surrounded by police, and a nervous police officer accidentally shoots Lola in the chest.
The scene fades out to show Lola and Manni talking in bed, with Lola questioning Manni about his love for her. Lola then says "Stop" and the film restarts at the point where she started running.
In the second run, the punk with the dog trips Lola, injuring her leg and making her limp slightly. She again causes a car accident involving the father's colleague. Lola arrives at the bank a few moments later because of her limp, which leaves enough time for her father's mistress to explain that she is pregnant by someone else. Lola hears more of the argument this time, and becomes infuriated. She robs her father's bank with a gun grabbed from the bank's security officer, escapes because the police mistake her for a fleeing hostage, and takes off with the money to meet Manni. When Lola reaches Manni, her call for his name is heard, but he is run down by an ambulance as he crosses the street to meet her.
The scene again fades to Lola and Manni in bed, this time with the roles reversed: Manni questions Lola about her love for him.
The third time Lola is a split second faster, as she leaps over the punk on the steps. This time she does not cause an accident, and the business associate is able to pick up Lola's father. She misses her father completely and keeps on running. Lola enters a casino, buys a single 100-mark chip, and finds a roulette table. She wins two consecutive bets on the number "20", which gives Lola 126,000 marks, more than enough money to help Manni. She hitches a ride in the ambulance from the previous runs, as it stops. The ambulance is carrying the security guard from her father's bank who has apparently suffered a heart attack. She takes his hand, and moments later, his heart rate begins to return to normal.
Meanwhile, Manni sees the homeless man who took his money in the beginning of the film. Manni chases him down, inadvertently causing a car crash involving Lola's father, his business associate, and the man who stole Lola's moped in the first place. He retrieves his money but, the homeless man asks for Manni's gun in return. Feeling sorry for the homeless man, Manni gives him his gun. Lola arrives to find Manni stepping out of a car and shaking his boss's hand. The movie ends with Manni asking Lola what is in the bag she is carrying.
The film features two allusions to Alfred Hitchcock's film Vertigo. Like that film, it features recurring images of spirals, such as the 'Spirale' Cafe behind Manni's phone box and the spiral staircase down which Lola runs. In addition, the painting on the back wall of the casino of a woman's head seen from behind is based on a shot in Vertigo: 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 the famous shot of the back of her head. The painting took fifteen minutes to complete.[2]
There are also several references to German culture in the film. The most notable is the use of Hans Paetsch as a narrator. Paetsch is a famous voice of children's stories in Germany, recognized by millions. Many of the small parts are cameo roles by famous German actors (for example the bank teller). Also, two quotes by German football legend Sepp Herberger appear: "The ball is round, the game lasts 90 minutes, everything else is pure theory," and, "After the game is before the game."
On several occasions the theme of free will vs. determinism is integrated into the film. The opening narration states the futility of asking questions, as one leads to another and we only travel in circles. Lola's interactions with other people are similar in that a small conversation or interaction with the people on the streets lead to other interactions. For example, the man on the bike can become a happy, married man or a bum. The concept of free will is also presented because she has three different realities to choose from.
Throughout the film, Lola bumps into people, talks to them, or simply passes them by, and the sound of a camera flash warming up can be heard. Their resulting futures are then conveyed 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 remains poor and kidnaps an unattended baby after her child was taken away by social workers. In another scenario the woman wins the lottery and becomes rich. In the third scenario, the woman experiences a religious conversion. The sound of the camera flash warming up is repeated a final time at the end of the film, when Lola smiles at Manni's question about what's in her bag.
The soundtrack of the film, by Tykwer, Johnny Klimek, and Reinhold Heil, includes numerous musical quotations of the sustained string chords of The Unanswered Question, an early 20th-century chamber ensemble work by American composer Charles Ives. In the original work, the chords are meant to represent "the Silences of the Druids—who Know, See and Hear Nothing."
The techno soundtrack established dialectical relation between motives of the movie: Rhythm, Repetition, and Interval among various spatio-temproral logics. This produces unification of contradictions like Time and Space or The cyclical and the linear.[3]
Run Lola Run was filmed extensively in and around Berlin, Germany. Here are some of the locations:[4]
The film was nominated for 41 awards, including the BAFTA Award for Best Film not in the English Language. It won 26. These included the Audience Award at the Sundance Film Festival, Best Film at the Seattle International Film Festival, and seven separate wins at the German Film Awards[5]
As of September 2008[update], the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reported that 92% of critics gave the film positive reviews, based on 79 reviews.[6] On Metacritic, another review aggregator, the film had an average score of 77 out of 100, based on 29 reviews, stating the film as having "generally favourable reviews".[7] The Internet Movie Database, IMDb, shows Run Lola Run as having earned 8 out of 10.[8]
In contrasting reviews, Film Threat's Chris Gore said of the film, "[It] delivers everything great foreign films should - action, sex, compelling characters, clever filmmaking, it's unpretentious (a requirement for me) and it has a story you can follow without having to read those annoying subtitles. I can't rave about this film enough -- this is passionate filmmaking at its best. One of the best foreign films, heck, one of the best films I have seen", while Jonathan Rosenbaum of The Chicago Reader stated, "About as entertaining as a no-brainer can be--a lot more fun, for my money, than a cornball theme-park ride like "Speed," and every bit as fast moving. But don't expect much of an aftertaste.".[9][10]
The film was released on DVD on December 21, 1999, and on Blu-ray on February 19, 2008.
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