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Run Lola Run
(Lola Rennt)
****
Cinema
Releases - October 22, 1999
Rated on a 4-star
scale. Germany. Written and directed by Tom Tykwer. Starring Franka Potente,
Moritz Bleibtreu, Herbert Knaup, Joachim Krol.
If a butterfly flaps its wings in China, I think
the saying goes, there's a tidal wave in the Pacific. Obviously, the free
will action of a creature cannot cause a natural scientific event, but the
point is a good one -- small, seemingly insignificant actions can have
immeasurable consequences. One possible situation: A builder standing on
a roof crouches down to get his cigarettes, moving out of the way of the
sunlight from the vantage point of a guy on the street. Dazzled, the guy
spins round, noticing a beautiful woman resembling an ex-girlfriend. Walking
away, he begins to think about how long it's been since he got laid. That
night, he determines to remedy the situation, rushes into a foolish one night
stand and contracts HIV.
Hey, it seems farfetched, but it's possible. I
used to consider things like this a lot when I was a kid, and now, in
"Run Lola Run", I've seen a movie obsessed with the same principle.
It doesn't contain my ingenious builder example, but examines three wildly
different directions for its initial set-up to go in, as the eponymous Lola
(Franke Potente) is telephoned at 11:40am and told to find 100, 000 Deutsche
Marks in 20 minutes.
The caller is her boyfriend Manni (Moritz Bleibtreu),
a small-time crook who has screwed up a cash delivery to one of the big boys,
letting his package fall into the hands of a subway tramp. If help doesn't
arrive by the midday deadline, Manni, who is armed with an automatic pistol,
will hold up the supermarket across the street from the telephone
booth.
The sexy Lola, who has fiery red hair, green pants
and a wonderfully tight grey top, runs through the streets of Berlin looking
like Lara Croft, in an attempt to get money from her father (Herbert Knaup)
and find her beloved on time. Brilliantly edited little asides show us the
mood the sight of her leaves on people, and the chain of events this leads
to in their lives. We're shown alternatives, too, presumably the result of
something else affecting the people in question after they see
Lola.
One comic subplot involves an extra-marital affair
Lola's father has entered into, and how differently it could turn out, depending
on how honest the bank manager and his mistress are with each other. We also
see three resolutions to the main plot -- tragic consequences for Lola, tragic
consequences for Manni and finally, of course, a miraculous happy ending.
It all ends with a cleverly simple sound effect that poses the question of
what will happen next to all the people we've seen. What other little things
could affect their lives?
That's how "Run Lola Run" works -- it doesn't
have answers, it is simply amused by questions and possibilities. It can't
get enough of this fascinating idea that great tangents in life can be caused
or avoided if we bat our eyelids, or walk a little slower or faster, or get
up a little earlier, or go back to the corner shop for some more chewing
gum. To mirror the way the mind processes such ideas, the movie travels at
the same pace as Lola's frantic running, displaying enough energy to make
"Election" seem like German expressionism. It's a hypnotic package: Director
Tom Twyker darts from furiously-cut straight action to animation, slow-motion,
black-and-white, split-screen, montage and video -- as Roger Ebert notes,
he throws every trick in the book at us, then the book, then
himself.
"Run Lola Run" is a great film, exciting to watch
and fun to consider. Critics lamenting how we never get to know much about
the personalities of the characters are missing the point. No, we don't discover
what Lola and Manni are like, but the film is about how things
could be. Their personalities could have been formed, or could be
changed, by something as small as a butterfly flapping its wings. Or a builder
crouching down for his cigarettes.
COPYRIGHT© 1999 Ian
Waldron-Mantgani
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