"Run Lola Run"

1. “Run Lola Run” What Really Makes You Rich in Life, Second Chances…

I found this film to be very interesting and creatively manifesting the notion of “what if.” So many times in daily life we wonder how the outcome of a situation have differed had we made different decisions, but we will never know the answer.

“Run Lola Run” addresses crime, punishment, love, money, family, emotion, relationships, life and death. All of these things are a part of our own lives, and people make critical decisions every single day. In this way, reality was portrayed through realistic circumstances, emotions, relationships and obstacles. Fantasy was integrated with the unrealistic ability of Lola to experience three separate versions of the daily events. This begins when Lola is shot in the chest and killed by a police-officer after helping her boyfriend Manni steal the money he needed from a store – at this point she says “No, no, I don’t want to go – STOP!” This would obviously be impossible for someone dead on the pavement to do – but the three versions each showcase different decisions made by Lola that influence the outcome of the event.

Clip #1: Lola agrees to help Manni find the $100,000 he needs in 20 minutes – she does this by (1) Running to her father’s bank, begging for money but is refused, her father tells Lola that he is leaving her & her mother for his mistress. (2) Lola is crying, arrives to Manni but he is already robbing the store, she helps him and they get the cash and flee. (3) Only to be stopped by the cops moments after, where Lola is shot in the chest.

Clip #2: (1) Runs to fathers bank, infuriated at his rejection & conversation with mistress, robs the bank with father at gunpoint to receive $100,000. (2) Lola arrives at the scene with the money in time. (3) Manni is run over and killed by an ambulance in the street.

Clip #3: (1) Runs to fathers bank but is not in time, he has already left. (2) Buys one chip at a casino and wins $100,000 playing roulette. (3) Runs to Manni in time, he has already paid back his “boss” because he finds the homeless man who stole his money in the first place, trades his gun for the bag of $100,000. (4) Manni asks what Lola has in the bag.

I felt that clips #1 and #2 illustrated that sacrificing moral virtues (robbing the store), family (robbing father’s bank at gunpoint), and overall honesty for money leads to a terrible fate. This reinforces the truth that family, virtue and moral goodness are the things in life that “matter most,” while diminishes the value of money as an obstacle in the way of these things and a threat to the welfare of those we love.

“Spirals” are a recurring image in the film – the stairs, roulette wheel and replaying of each clip. I feel that these images are important to represent the circular motion of life and death, also “Fortune’s Wheel,” (karma) as a component in determining our fate, and the repetition of clips as a parallel of daily routines and patterns that we develop during our life. In “Run Lola Run,” these vital spirals are broken by death, provoked by money.

In my research, I found that the narrator of the film is a man named Hans Paetsch – famous for his voice in narrating children’s stories in Germany. This ties into “Grimm’s Fairytales” – the notion of stories influencing a culture, creating a national identity.

Finally, the way that each clip is “rewritten” reminded me of the way mythic stories are ‘rewritten’ in ‘The Ogre,’ – Tournier reshapes, splice-and-dices famous stories such as Adam and Eve in The Bible, St. Christopher, the apocalypse, and the historical accounts of the Holocaust in Nazi Germany to illustrate the detrimental impact that an immoral society has on the human condition. This ties in deeply with my response on “Pan’s Labyrinth.”