Run Lola Run
Directed by Tom Tykwer
starring Franka Potente
playing at selected theaters - hunt for it!.
* * * *
(four stars)
no
time to read the whole review?
THE
JIST of MY PROSE
The pulse of energy and speed and motion and everything
that moves and pumps us up - defined.
Here lies a sharp, lightning-quick car crash of ideas all executed
with the pep, vim and verve of a child. The child, is Lola - with fierce
red hair and a mission that she's determined to complete. She has 20 minutes
to save her boyfriend Manni from certain doom after he loses a sack of
money belonging to a nasty gangster. The way I've described it is not quite
what races through the viewer's
mind here. Very little is allowed race through our minds - we're totally
enveloped in
what's going on - we've an entertaining film, wrought with likable
and colorful
cinematography, sly editing that caters to the "one-second attention
span" crowd
and Lola, my God - Lola! What a presence! For a film that is obviously
out of my own
personal demographics - it's in German - it speaks a universal tongue.
Everything that
happens is meant to drive the viewer's sense of fate just a little
bit farther. The film's
three segments - each a different path that Lola's mission takes her
- a variation caused by
previous events (we even see through a grotesquely speedy photo-sort
how her paths
affect others' lives). The dishonesty and desperation all take a backburner
to a need Lola
and her boyfriend feel to get to their destination. They both want
to save Manni - but Lola
wants to do it the easy way - Manni, the hard way - which, out of the
very desperation I
referenced above, will ultimately be in robbing a supermarket.
The film is also a gigantic metaphor for the upcoming millenium and
the shortening
distance we're all facing between ourselves and this brave new time.
The film
hypothesizes that we, as a people, are all running towards something
- moving far too
quickly and too desperately to stop and realize what the future means,
where we are in
the moment and who we really are. We all live as though we have twenty
minutes to
change the future - when in reality - all we have to do is let the
future change us -
as all the people on Lola's trek no doubt DO NOT realize - but we,
as an audience, are
faced with accepting. The film argues that we all don't really have
a choice because, in
the end - when Lola is turned down and has but a few minutes, she just
repeats "Wait,
wait, wait....", hoping a solution will present itself. Fate dictates,
the future comes and
she sees her answer.
Is the film asking us to slow down? No. I don't think it's that bold.
It's not a forthright
commentary - but buried beneath the watchable storyline with it's pumping
electronic
score - is the same heartbeat that's in all of us. We're running towards
our destination and
we can't change what happens along the way. If what happens along the
way changes us -
so be it. If it changes the final outcome - so be it. In "Run Lola
Run", 'so be it' is the
answer - letting fate take charge is the answer. Now you tell me -
is there a message or
am I rushing to a conclusion?