Jana Myga Why You Schould See Lola Run "Run Lola Run" German Film with English subtitles. Running time approx. 80 minutes. Director/Screenplay - Tom Tykwer Cinematography - Frank Griebe Editing - Matilde Bonnefoy

Young film makers coming out of film schools are more concerned about the craft of movie making than about the stories they tell. It is evident in the number of films which are essentially either about the process or about the business.î said director/producer Lawrence Kasdan Mumford in the recent interview on NPR. Tom Tykwer, the director of Run Lola Run does not exactly fill this bill. He is not freshly out of film school. Tykwer as a director already has to his credit three full-length features and numerous engagements as a producer, writer, and composer. Yet, Run Lola Run, his latest work to hit American movie theaters is primarily focused on the "how" the story is told and not on "what" the story is. A very thin line separates the banal from the profound in Tykwer screenplay. However, from the very outset he is eager to convince us that it is the profound, the eternal questions of Life, Death, Love and Time he wishes to tackle. Hence, the quote from T.S. Eliot implying the circular nature of all our actions, as well as the well-worn metaphors of life as a game, be it soccer or dominos. The plot is miniscule : Lola (Franka Potente) has 20 minutes to raise 100,000DM to save her aspiring gangster boyfriend Manni (Moritz Bleibtreu) from his merciless mobster boss. The development of this plot on film takes approximately 20 minutes. What makes it a full-length film is that the sequence of events is replayed three times with small variations which produce different, but progressively more banal outcomes; the last one being ėthey lived "happily ever after" with loads of cash on hand. Here is Tykwer's quick and simple recipe how to tackle universal questions in only twenty minutes (note: remember to capitalize the key ingredients to indicate larger than usual dosage): Because of LOVE she races against TIME and risks her LIFE to save him from DEATH. Needless to say there is little time in this recipe for meaningful dialog or character development. Even during the bedroom scenes, which are intended to signal an occasional need for retrospection, (and to give the audience a breather from the neck breaking pace of the movie) one can sense lover's impatience and frustration with each other's inability to communicate their inner restlessness and doubts. The majority of the main characters, except for the heroine, seems flat and contrived, perhaps because they are portrayed totally out of context. Only Franka Potenete playing the punky teenage lead manages to touch upon human elements of panic and despair. Thanks to her acting Lola is less of cartoon caricature and more of a frantic girl. Yet, Tom Tykwer is much too clever to let himself be dismissed merely because of the lack of depth or substance in his script. However small his story may be, it gets a lavish treatment at the hands of a master craftsman of the movie making art. And although we, the audience, know that his film is an artifice contrived for the purpose of the cinematic effects, still, we are mesmerized. Tykwer, his cinematographer Frank Griebe, and his film editor Matilde Bonnefoy have a bag of tricks that seems bottomless. The exhilarating tempo, the breathless panic to which we all surrender, are the result of the cunning conflation of filming techniques that begins with animation and continues through zooms, crane shots, camera circling, split screens, stop motions effects, still photography and montage. Whooh! The visual impact of this flawless assemblage is magnified by the pulsating relentless techno sound track rushing the action forward. We are but toys in the experienced hands of the puppet master and have no choice but to give in and let ourselves be carried by this sensory onslaught. The flashing sequences of contrasting, juxtaposed images, connected by the steady movement of the running and of time running out - these are the functions of ever increasing kinetic energy and tension. Add the merciless barrage of the rhythmic sound track, and then sudden momentary silence - and we are seduced. The silence acquires unusual gravity and meaning. After seeing this tour de force of film craft one may call it an exercise in style, or a film as a video game, or one may wonder how much can be done with how little. Yet, it is a film of our age and for our age depicting rushed, modern, urban existence and warfare, where no one has time to either observe or contemplate the complexities of life, where we may touch upon the profound but rarely be moved to the core. In a way we deserve what we get.

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