25/04/2012: Lola Rennt (Run Lola Run) [1998]

Last night I decided to get a little foreign with my movies and so, I started off with one of the best pieces of German cinema, Lola Rennt. Lola, has 20 minutes to get 100,000 Deutschmarks in order to stop her boyfriend from robbing a supermarket. While as impossible as this might seem, Lola will be damned if she doesn't try her hardest and save her boyfriend.




So with last night being my designated foreign cinema night, I obviously watched Run Lola Run in German with subtitles, as I strongly believe in watching a movie in the language it was intended. Run Lola Run is actually an amazing achievement, both in style and technically, and what makes it even better is it is a German movie. Those directors in Hollywood could continue to roll out the same cookie cutter movies all they wanted but Tom Tykwer was going to make a film that set the bar, both in Germany and internationally. With 41 nominations and 26 awards I think we can safely say he did that.

Now when, you read that Lola has 20 minutes, you think well that is going to be a lot of background story or she is going to fail, and things are going to get crazy. This is however untrue, and Lola does have only 20 minutes from the start of the film, however, she gets three chances. Lola Rennt, contains three scenarios in which Lola tries to find the money necessary required to save her boyfriend, and while this may seem a little repetitive, the scenarios are all rather different, and the minor details in between them are rather intriguing to discover.

One warning though, you literally will watch Lola run, and run and run. However this is easily compensated by first, the awesome soundtrack to this movie, and two, the cool side stories that occur whenever she bumps into or brushes by someone when running. In the first story, a biker she interacts with is shown getting robbed, then meeting his future wife as a nurse in the hospital, the second time he is not so lucky.

There are also many other subtle connections between Lola's actions in each story. Does one story affect another, does she remember the others, there are many different interpretations of what it all means. However, Lola Rennt's story is not the main element to leave its mark on cinema. It is the style of filmmaking that makes this movie unique. Tykwer, literally uses have the techniques in the book. With 1581different cuts, the average shot length is only 2.7 seconds, combine this with his use of black and white, some animated sequences, speed up and slow down as well as replays, to give us a bunch of different viewpoints.

"Is that 75% off sauerkraut?"

 The cast in Lola Rennt is a good one, although there is not so much required of them. The character development is nothing to extensive, with the most being actually of Manni, played by Moritz Bleibtreu, who although a bad guy, we still care about his character and rout for him like the good guy. Lola, played by Franka Potente also does a good job, although most of her acting is physical, a lot of running. Also, she couldn't wash her hair for the seven weeks this was shot, as her iconic hair colour would have faded, dedication. Franka Potente, is also recognizable in the first two Bourne movies as Marie, until her unfortunate end.There is also an abundance of cameos by famous German actors, although I wouldn't recognize any of them.

Overall, Lola Rennt was easily a massive step forward both in German filmmaking, but cinema in general. If you haven't seen it yet, get to it. If you must I'm sure there is a dubbed version, but I always watch it in the original language and do not find subtitles annoying or problematic in any way.

Link:
Lola Rennt IMDb