Product: Run, Lola, Run [VHS] (1999)
Rating: 5.0
A Lesson in Anti-Theology?
I've watched "Run Lola Run" three times now --once at an arthouse theatre when it first opened, again after purchasing the DVD about a year ago, and again this past week.The first time I watched the DVD, I hadn't realized that there were two different versions --dubbed and subtitled-- on the disk. My wife and I watched the dubbed version and we were both VERY disappointed. Even if you don't understand a lick of German (and we don't), the subtitled one allows you to better gauge the emotions of the original performance. Actors dubbing in the dialogue after-the-fact, rarely, if ever, can match the impact of the original.Last week, I watched it again with a friend --but only after having turned the disk over to the subtitled side.Lola has received a frantic phone call from her boyfriend, Manni. He had left a sack containing 100,000 German Marks on a train... money that he was going to be turning over to his mobster boss in 20 minutes. If he doesn't have the money when he meets his boss, he's dead.Lola dashes out of her apartment with no general idea of how she's going to come up with 100,000 Marks, and interacts with a number of people along the way.As for the lesson in (anti) theology... (from my perspective, anyway)The anti-theological point of RLR is that the most minute change in any event has a cascading effect where the resulting outcome may bear no resemblance to the events that would occur had the minor changes not taken place. In other words, this film is going to disturb the "events are pre-ordained by God" crowd.Early in each of her three runs, Lola encounters a nasty old woman, but with the *slightest* variation between the encounters. The first time, they clip shoulders as she runs past... the woman sneers and calls Lola a name, and then the film offers about a dozen "snapshots" of the events that follow in the woman's life. (Something involving the government taking her children... or perhaps she had kidnapped them in the first place. I can't say for certain.)The second encounter with the woman results in a much bigger bump... almost knocking the woman over. The woman turns and calls Lola a VERY bad name, but this time the forward-flash snapshots show the woman winning the lottery.In their final encounter, Lola has left the apartment without tripping, and therefore breezes past the old woman because she gets to the same spot about a second earlier. The woman STILL sneers at her, (but does not call her a name!), and this time we witness the next events in her life: Pretty much a mundane snapshot, sitting watching TV with her husband.There were a handful of encounters with different people, and evey minor change created enough changes in the fabric of events that the final outcome was very different.Theists are sure to point out though, that there WAS one scene that would seem to argue on the side of events being pre-ordained: In each of the three segments, a man has a car accident, even though each accident takes place in a different way and at a diffent time. The man of course was DESTINED to have a wreck!Personally, I think they included these scenes to make you think about it... but my personal opinion is that if there were a FOURTH run, (or a fifth or a sixth!), he eventually WOULDN'T have the wreck.Besides, the dramatic differences in outcome for Lola and Manni ought to outweigh any suggestion of pre-destiny for what is a minor scene in the film.