Product: Run, Lola, Run [VHS] (1999)
Rating: 5.0
Intense, Profound, Stylish take on Blind Chance
Run Lola Run (Lola Rennt) is one of the best European Alternative films to come out of the past decade. Directed and written by the great Tom Tykwer and starring Franka Potente (born exactly 10 years after me) this film starts out with a clock. You sense you are about to go on a time trip, and soon you're in the race against time. Incredible avant-garde cinematography mixed perfectly with cartoon animation focuses on Lola, a red-haired high energy time vortex. She has 20 minutes to come up with 100,000 marks all in the name of love. If things dont go quite right it's okay, because here alternate reality comes into play ala the great Polish film Blind Chance (Przypadek by Kieslowski). Profound questions are asked, and the film puts forth the idea that a butterfly (Lola) flapping its wings in Japan will effect American weather. The quantum pure spontaneity of conscious decisions effect events at every Lola turn.A great soundtrack drives it all and the whole film fits together perfectly. A rare avant-garde success which is similar to and every equal of Aronofsky's Pi in significance. Also captures the Berlin (I think that's where it is) atmosphere great; city chaos and freedom. You must have a taste for the underground European avant-garde to really appreciate this.