Run Lola Run

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Run Lola Run
Directed by	Tom Tykwer
Produced by	Stefan Arndt
Written by	Tom Tykwer
Starring	Franka Potente Moritz Bleibtreu
Distributed by	Prokino Filmverleih
Release date(s)	20 August 1998, 18 June 1999, 20 October 1999 27 October 1999
Running time	76 min
Language	German
Budget	$1,750,000 (estimated)
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Run Lola Run (original German title Lola rennt, which translates to Lola Runs) is a 1998 film by German screenwriter and director Tom Tykwer, starring Franka Potente as Lola.

[edit] Overview

Run Lola Run is an unconventional, nonlinear film. 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.^{[citation needed]} Spirals are also frequently used as a visual motif, partially as homage to Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo, which Tykwer has acknowledged. 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 (who died in 1996) had planned as his next film.

[edit] Synopsis

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 does not appear, but he accidentally leaves the money on a subway train after being caught off guard by the appearance of two ticket inspectors. The bag containing the money is then found by a homeless person. Manni places a frantic phone call to Lola and explains the situation: he will certainly be killed if he does not have the money when he meets Ronnie at noon. Lola vows to somehow obtain 100,000 marks and get to Manni in the twenty minutes she has. Manni states he will rob a supermarket on the street corner for the money if Lola has not come by then. It is at this point that the alternative-realities sequence begins.

First reality: Manni and Lola rob a supermarket.

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. Lola's father refuses, and says that he feels unappreciated at home, and that he is leaving Lola and her mother for his mistress. He also announces that he is not Lola's real father. Lola runs to where Manni is anyway, passing an ambulance that stops in front of a crew of workers carrying a window pane. She arrives at the street corner a few moments too late: Manni's robbery is already in progress. Lola decides to help Manni 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. While Lola is dying, a sequence of her memory (or, possibly, her consciousness) takes place.

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. A small boy on the stairway in her apartment trips her and the outcome is wildly different. Lola arrives at the bank a moment later, which leaves enough time for her father's mistress to explain that she has become pregnant by someone else. Lola interjects in the ensuing argument and becomes infuriated by the situation. She robs her father's bank at gunpoint. She runs to bring the money to Manni, and tries to hitch a ride on the ambulance from before, but her distraction of the driver makes the ambulance crash into the window pane, stopping it for a few seconds. When Lola reaches Manni, he is run down by the same ambulance as he crosses the street towards Lola.

Third reality

The story starts a third time. Lola is a split second faster, since she leaps over the steps where she would be tripped, and stops on Mr. Meyer's (her father's co-worker) car long enough to prevent an accident that happens in the other realities. This allows Mr. Meyer to get to work and pick up Lola's father. As a result, Lola misses her father completely. Not knowing what to do, she decides to simply keep running. She arrives at a casino, receives a single 100-mark chip, and finds a roulette table. She wins two consecutive bets on the number "20", which gives Lola 127,000 marks. More than sufficient money to help Manni, but she still must catch him in time. She hitches a ride in the same ambulance from before, unnoticed by the driver, as it stops in front of the crew with the window pane. The ambulance is carrying Schuster, the security guard from her father's bank, who has apparently suffered a heart attack, as foreshadowed by his clutching his chest and his loud heartbeats on the soundtrack earlier in the film. Although some English subtitles have Lola saying "I'll stay with him," the actual German line is "Ich gehöre zu ihm," which translates as "I'm with him" (literally: "I belong to him.") She holds Schuster's hand, and moments later, his heart rate begins to return to normal.

Meanwhile, Manni has borrowed a phone card from a blind woman to make a phone call seeking a loan. As in the other sequences, he returns the phone card to the woman he borrowed it from, but this time the woman 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. Lola arrives to find Manni stepping out of Ronnie's car under congenial circumstances. The movie ends with Manni asking Lola what's in the bag she's carrying, which contains her casino winnings.

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 kidnaps an unattended baby after her child was taken away by social workers. In yet another scenario, the woman experiences none of the above and becomes a Jehovah's Witness.

The movie itself begins by posing questions pertaining to the unpredictability of the world and the unknowable nature of its meaning. It suggests that drastically disparate consequences can result to many different people from a one second change in the time of one person's running.

[edit] References in the film

Apart from the debt to Krzysztof Kieślowski mentioned above, perhaps this film's most obvious visual references are to Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo. 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. Lola chose the number "20" in a roulette game because it represents the time length of Lola's mission (winning twice in a row on 20 could also be a reference to the film Casablanca). The casino is a town hall in real life.

Another clear reference is to the noon deadline by which Manni must find 100,000 DM or face deadly retribution from Ronnie. In the 1952 Western High Noon, Sherrif Will Kane (Gary Cooper) faces the noon return of an outlaw he had earlier captured and seen convicted. Like Will Kane, Manni faces a noon deadline by which time he must make some serious decisions. Both films also pass in real time.

Other movie references are more obscure. The store robbery scene is sometimes described as a homage to Pulp Fiction or any number of Bonnie and Clyde-style tales. Also, the close-up shot of Lola running towards the camera (after she robs the money from her father's bank) appears to be a reference to Raiders of the Lost Ark where Indiana Jones tries to save his girlfriend whereas in this film, the gender is reversed.

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 had listened to his children's stories growing up would recognize. Two quotes by German football legend Sepp Herberger, "The ball is round, the game lasts 90 minutes, everything else is pure theory." are spoken in the first scene of the film. Herberger's quote; "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". The "Unanswered Question" is 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. The song "I Wish" (sung by Potente) expresses the prediction of such event by altering mood and atmosphere. In the first, the music is played in the wake of alertness; the second displays danger. The third is upbeat with additional lyrics such as Never Say Never suggesting an opportunity of hope. Moreover, the third music explains Lola's true emotions and struggles. It also metaphorically explains her desire towards the upcoming present and future.

DVD Cover of Run Lola Run

[edit] Trivia

• The entire soundtrack is sung in English in the original German version.
• Franka Potente sings most of the songs on the soundtrack.
• The combination to the back offices in the bank is 0845.
• The phone booth outside the Lotto featured throughout the film has a copy of Paradise Lost on the shelf next to the phone.
• The title frame of "Lola Rennt" (filmed at an empty airport) was shot one letter at a time using only 300 extras because of financial circumstances.
• The name of Lola's boyfriend, "'Manni" may be a reference to Mani the prophet founder of Manichaeism,a faith that teaches dualism. In the movie Manni has a tendency to see things in "Black or White".

[edit] Run Lola Run in popular culture

• The Simpsons episode "Trilogy of Error" makes a clear reference to the movie (Lisa must run through Springfield) and part of Run Lola Run's soundtrack is heard.
• 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 includes pictures of the possible lives people could have.
• An episode of Seven Days explores a similar idea, in which the protagonist goes back in time to rescue his boss and arrives moments too late. He then experiences a time "bubble" allowing him to go back to the beginning, each time altering his strategy a little differently for the difficulties and obstacles that present themselves.
• The music video for Quarashi's "Mr. Jinx" paid 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 after waking up sometime after the gig was supposed to begin.
• The music video for Yellowcard's "Ocean Avenue" also features alternate timelines. The band's frontman Ryan Key chases after a woman who has stolen a briefcase from him, and is pursued by two thugs who are actually members of the band.
• The music video for Starsailor's "This Time", features a man being told to meet his girlfriend at "the station" in a note. He arrives at the station and misses her, and gets back in his car and drives over a train line while the train is moving and gets involved in a car crash. We see the action happen again but the second time round he puts the brake on his car after an ice hockey puck moves into the road and looks at the note again and realises it actually said "radio station" after pulling it out of the envelope completely. He makes his way to the radio station where the band are performing, and meets her outside.
• Part of the soundtrack for the 2002 film The Bourne Identity is from Run Lola Run (also starring Franka Potente). The films also share fast-moving automobiles interacting with some workers moving a large sheet of window glass.
• It could be argued that some of Jennifer Garner's earlier outfits in the television hit, Alias, were inspired by the film. In the opening scene of the pilot she is seen running from some bad guys while sporting bright red hair. Another outfit consisting of bright blue hair and leather also seems like a tribute. Although unconfirmed, J. J. Abrams has been quoted as saying he listened to the soundtrack for Run Lola Run while writing some early episodes.
• The producer of Lizzie McGuire, Stan Rogow, has said that the visual look of that show was partly inspired by Run Lola Run.
• 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 1991 Toto le Héros.
• In 2003, filmmaker Adam Bertocci made Run Leia Run, a Star Wars / Run Lola Run crossover animated fan film.
• Head Automatica's music video for the single "Graduation Day" features flash forwards using still frames of future events for six students who just graduated high school. The Goth-kid becomes a president, the Jock of the school is revealed to be gay and gets married in a civil union, the Cheerleader becomes a single mother with two children and is pregnant again. Plus, she becomes very poor living in a trailer park. The fat girl loses weight by doing yoga and becomes attractive as a result, the Asian Geek is pursuing his career as a pornstar, and the bully-criminal converts to Christianity eventually becoming a priest.
• Track 10 of Ojos de brujo's third album Techarí is called "Corre Lola, Corre" in an obvious reference to the film.
• In Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps (a popular british comedy), the character Gaz has a poster of Run Lola Run in his bedrooom
• Canadian rock band .Moneen. feature a split screen split storyline in their music video for the song "If Tragedy's Appealing, Disaster's an Addiction" showing the difference one small move can make in the outcome of your day.
• Science fiction television show Cleopatra 2525 features a tribute episode entitled "Run Cleo Run", where main character Cleopatra runs through a training simulation twice before doing it for real, each attempt varying slightly. She also uses her scream to influence events at one point, preceeding it by saying "I saw this in a movie once."
• Cult fantasy show G vs E features an episode based on the premise of Run Lola Run, in which Chandler Smythe attempts to rescue his son as events repeat three times, with small differences that eventually change the outcome radically.
• Supernatural television show Charmed references the film in the episode entitled "Run Piper Run".
• The Buffy the Vampire Slayer season 7 episode "Beneath You" features a Lola-inspired figure in its opening sequence.
• In the comic Transmetropolitan #33 page 15, a character almost identical to Lola is seen running with a bag in her hand.
• In the manga Negima!: Magister Negi Magi, on chapter 39 from volume 5, there is a reference to the movie title on Asuna's sweater.
• In the manga "Saiyuki Reload", in the 4th volume there is a sequence where Banri asks his friend Gojyo to remain as a hostage for him while he goes out to steal the thing that he owns a gang, and Banri tries to persuade Gojyo to stay by saying, "It'll just be like the movie 'Run Lola Run'!"
• In the TV show Scrubs, the episode My Bright Idea contains a scene where The Janitor runs toward JD while music from the movie plays in the background.

[edit] Cast list

• Franka Potente: Lola
• Moritz Bleibtreu: Manni
• Herbert Knaup: Papa
• Nina Petri: Frau Hansen
• Armin Rohde: Herr Schuster
• Joachim Król: Norbert von Au
• Ludger Pistor: Herr Meier
• Suzanne von Borsody: Frau Jäger
• Sebastian Schipper: Mike
• Julia Lindig: Doris
• Lars Rudolph: Herr Kruse
• Ute Lubosch: Mama
• Hans Paetsch: Narrator

[edit] See also

• Time loop
• The Princess and the Warrior Tykwer's subsequent film

[edit] External links

• Run Lola Run at the Internet Movie Database
• Run Lola Run at Rotten Tomatoes
• Run Lola Run at Box Office Mojo
• List of locations used in the film
• www.lola-rennt.de A private homepage of the movie, also in English version.