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Run Lola Run

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.

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. 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.

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 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
  • 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. While Lola is dying, a sequence of her memory 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 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 the English subtitles have Lola saying "I'll stay with him," the actual German line is "Ich gehöre zu ihm," which translates as "I belong to him." Some take this to suggest that Schuster is Lola's biological father. 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 her child is taken away by social workers. In yet another scenario, the woman experiences none of the above and becomes a Jehovah's Witness. 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 begins with posing questions pertaining to the unpredictability of the world and the unknowable nature of its meaning. It suggests that drastically different consequences can result to many different people from a one second change in the time of one person's running.

    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

    Source: wikipedia.org


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