Blaine: Tom Tykwer was one of the three screenwriters/producers/directors of "Cloud Atlas" and he is also best known for "Run Lola Run". On the "Cloud Atlas" trailers it would always say "From the Creators of The Matrix Trilogy and the Director of Run Lola Run." I already had seen "The Matrix" movies, but I never have seen "Run Lola Run”. I looked it up and the whole movie was on Youtube so I watched it. The problem was there were no subtitles and I couldn't understand what the characters were saying in the film because they were speaking German. So I had to guess what was happening just by paying attention to the actions. It was sort of like watching a silent movie for me. I have an addiction for movies that can be challenging, but also creative at the same time and I fully understood what was going on in “Run Lola Run".
Plot
The film focuses most on Lola running. Her mission is to collect 100,000 Deutsche Marks (the German currency before they started using the Euro) that her boyfriend, Manni, had lost. He needed to pay it back, otherwise his boss would kill him. And she has twenty minutes to collect it. She knows her father is the only one who can help because he works at a bank, but he doesn’t give it to her and throws her out of the building. Lola's path is told three different times. In the first story she and Manni rob a grocery store. In the second story she robs her father’s bank and in the third she gets the money by gambling at a casino.
Blaine: It’s like what if something you did happened the other way around. The only problem I have with the story is after Manni catches the homeless man who has his bag, he trades his gun for the bag. The homeless man could have shot Manni when his back was turned and taken the money.
Everyone who was a part of the project had a hard time understanding what they were making and what it was supposed to be about, but they also felt it was special to them as well. When writer-director Tom Tykwer started to develop the whole project, it was sparked by this whole idea to construct an entire movie around the image of a running girl. Actress Franka Potente trusted Tom with everything he was doing with this project. Tom wanted the movie to be repetitive other than a girl running from one point to the other because he thought it would be fun to watch and an experimental movie for mass audiences. If you put one piece in a different order everything collapses and that’s what the whole idea of the film. Tom Tykwer said it needed rhythmical support from Mathilde Bonnefoy's editing.
When Lola runs down the apartment stairs, it is shown as a cartoon and she passes a teenager and his dog. Franka said the use of cartoon was an abstract, surreal door. What cartoons always do is give you the feeling that "anything could happen."
Tom said that “Run Lola Run” is sort of a remake of a short film that he made in the past called “Because”. And that film was about a couple that was arguing all the time. It’s an argument that always starts at the same spot and goes three different ways the ways.
Franka said she had never jogged in her life and she finds it boring. For “Run Lola Run" she had do some training and she also had somebody who was training with her during the shooting. And she would do a warm-up run every morning and she had to get her respiration up before running.
He was like, “Look, it’s not just the breathing. I see it in your skin and your eyes. It’s a certain rhythm pulsating.” So, I was basically running around the block before I was running. Tom said he really wanted a human being that is completely normal, that doesn’t have this perfectly model-shaped body, but is just the girl next door. But one who is driven by intense emotion and by the adrenalin and the mix of fury and passion. The energy level could never be lower than 150%, so the most important was to start out with that desperate energy and then allow things to happen. That energy was the clue.
They didn't have a lot of money for the soundtrack or a singer. The first drafts of the songs are very minimal, nearly primitive, but what they gave us through the editing was, for instance, the beats-peer-minute structure. We knew we would stay with this beats-per-minute structure, and then slowly other sounds would be added to it. And then we would take Franka’s voice and record her voice.
The make-up department had to bleach Franka’s hair eight times in order to get it really white, in order to get it bright red. What wasn’t easy for Franka was she couldn’t wash her hair for three months and after the first six weeks of shooting it really needed to be washed. Lola scream in the film is shrill and it is so loud and high pitched that she broke glass in the casino. Tom said the scream was in the script and he asked Franka during her rehearsal how good she can scream and if she could scream on the top of her lungs. The cinematography was done by Frank Griebe, who did a really good on focusing and catching up with Lola as she is running.
Tom said the movie wouldn’t have worked even remotely as good as it did if they didn’t had found Franka. Her performance and her energy and this whole vibrating aura that she brings to the movie, it’s the sprit of the soul and I think also all of the power of the film. “Run Lola Run” is not only clever, but a lot of work was put into it and that’s what I love about it the most. "Cloud Atlas" is one of the greatest movies in my book and it lead me to this other great movie, "Run Lola Run". My rating on “Run Lola Run” is five out of five stars.
Music
Blaine: I love the music to the film as well. It’s very catchy. The film has three composers and one of them is the director, Tom Tykwer. The other two are Reinhold Heil and Johnny Klimek.
The song "Believe" sung by Lola herself, Franka Potente
An example
Blaine: I like the way this scene was made. The tempo of the music changes as the editing cuts to different shots from different angles.
Parodie
I've seen "The Simpsons" do a parody of “Run Lola Run” on episode eighteen of season twelve, "Trilogy of Error"
Many thanks to my dad for helping me with this review
