Product: Run, Lola, Run [VHS] (1999)
Rating: 5.0
Different outcomes but always the same fast pace
The teaser for this film is that, every second of every day, you come across a choice that can change your life. Tom Tykwer's film appears to show that, rather than the main protagonists making alternative decisions the whole time, their actions are more or less governed not just by other people's decisions and actions, but also by the timing of those decisions or actions.The plot centres around the girlfriend, Lola (Franka Potente), of a would-be gangster, Manni (Moritz Bleibtreu), who has to come up with a way of grabbing a whopping 100,000 marks (this was in the pre-euro days!) in just 20 minutes, otherwise the do-not-trust-anyone head of the mob, Ronnie (Heino Ferch), may do unspeakable things to him, if not give him a quick headbutt as he did for keeping a packet of fags from him once.One particular event, the theft of Lola's moped (shown as a flashback in monochrome), starts a chain of events, which will either see Ronnie get his money successfully or else see other outcomes. As a result, Manni, speaking in a desperate tone of voice from a phone booth, tells Lola that he will rob the nearest supermarket if she does not come within 20 minutes, preferably with the money.Three alternate scenarios, with three very different outcomes, are played out during this film, all of which are accompanied by a thumping, racing soundtrack composed by Reinhold Heil, Johnny Klimek and director Tom Tykwer, as Lola runs, firstly, to a bank where her father (Herbert Knaup) just happens to be the bank manager, and lastly arrives at the intersection, where the phone booth and the supermarket are, by one means or another.Lola encounters characters who recur throughout the film, including Jutta Hansen (Nina Petri), who is Lola's father's mistress, Herr Schuster (Armin Rohde), who is the security guard at the bank, an old lady pushing a pram, whom Lola almost crashes into at exactly the same spot during her headlong dash to the bank, a young man who wants to sell her a bike he stole, and the tramp who managed to get hold of Manni's plastic bag containing the money he was given from the deal, which he had accidentally left on a Berlin subway train in panic at seeing two inspectors come into the car.Only one scene out of all three scenarios remains precisely the same, namely that of Lola's mother talking to a married man on the phone when Lola runs out of the flat at the start of the 20 minutes needed to get the money. Franka Potente is spared running down flights of stairs in the apartment building via the substitution of animation, first seen on Lola's mother's TV and then seen as part of the main story, although we do see (the live-action) Lola lying at the bottom of the stairs at one point after being deliberately tripped over by a young boy wearing a baseball cap, albeit in animation only.Not in any particular order, the scenarios include a bank robbery, a supermarket robbery, the same two cars involved in crashes, the moped thief crashing, Lola screaming, Lola almost being run over by an ambulance, Manni being actually run over by the same ambulance, the ambulance narrowly avoiding a huge piece of glass, the ambulance smashing the glass to smithereens, Lola being shot by a police officer, Lola doing her nut in her father's office, Lola being told to get away from the bank by an armed police response team, the security guard having heart problems ... and, as for the money, I will not say!Also, the characters of the old lady pushing the pram and the guy on the bicycle are shown in still "flash forward" pictures in rapid succession, accompanied on the soundtrack by the sound of a camera warming up before a flash picture is taken. Though they are minor characters, they are just as much affected by alternative events and outcomes as anybody else, so this is quite an interesting technique to show what happens to these people in the space of a few seconds of film running time.If you want to know which events come where, you will have to see this imaginative movie, which also contains two scenes where Lola and Manni are alone together, discussing how they really feel towards each other and what they would really do if particular situations were to occur. Each scene follows each of the first two scenarios and, though not at all action scenes with any music, they serve to help the audience realize that even the best of relationships may not be as solid as one might think at first.Tykwer has crafted a film that focuses very much on fate, not just determining one's own, but also having it determined by other people and events, both predictable and unpredictable. This is very much Franka Potente's movie, since it was the one which catapulted her to worldwide fame and a bourgeoning career as a Hollywood actress. I have heard both British English and American English soundtracks (as well as the original German!) yet only the DVD with the American English soundtrack also has the English commentary on the film by Potente and Tykwer. Here, Potente reveals that, one evening when it looked like it might rain, she had gone to a bar and met Tykwer, who would eventually cast her as Lola. Had it been raining that evening, she admits she might never have gone to that bar in the first place, so she never would have met Tykwer, so he never would have cast her as Lola, so she might never have eventually become famous and gone to Hollywood. Life imitating art, indeed!