A review of the film Run Lola Run that explores the process of creating revelations in a story.
Run Lola Run, a German film written and directed by Tom Tykwer, demonstrates how an on-going series of revelations about a story's characters can power the advance of a dramatic story. The film begins with a framework that suggests time is a beast that swallows us all. We're then shown a milling crowd that eventually forms the film title, Run Lola Run. This use of the crowd is a revelation that affirms this story is a game created by the storyteller.
As the story continues, we drop down from the sky, into an apartment, and toward a ringing, red phone. Manni, boyfriend of Lola, is calling to tell her he's 'done for.' Because Lola didn't meet him, he lost some money and will be killed unless Lola can come up with 100,000 marks in 20 minutes.
How Manni ended up in this situation is offered as a series of quickly paced revelations.
Manni reminds Lola that she once told him, "Love can do everything."
Can Lola's love save Manni?
This story begins with techniques - animation, characters speaking to the camera - that remind us that this story is a construct of the storyteller. Yet, because of the emotional intensity of the revelations about Manni's situation and how he blames Lola for it, the effect is to catch up the emotions of the audience. It's the magic all well-told stories create, quickly drawing us into a new world and engaging us to feel emotionally or thoughtfully invested in a story's characters. Once that storytelling magic happens, the audience wants to experience a story's on-going revelations about its characters.
Continuing, on a television a row of dominoes collapse in a pattern, reaffirming the point that everything Lola must do to save Manni must happen with the right timing.
As the camera circles Lola, we see a series of faces, revealing who she's thinking about. We hear her thoughts settle on the word, "Papa," and the images freeze on the face of her father.
Lola now sets off with a twenty-minute deadline to get 100,000 marks.
As she turns to go, the man looking into the camera turns in the direction she's running and shakes his head 'no.'
This makes Lola's situation more desperate. It also reveals to the audience something Lola doesn't know. Such revelations help an audience feel more invested in a story. As Lola runs through the house, she passes by her mother on the phone. In the background on a television, we see Lola as an animated figure running down some curving stairs.
Lola comes out of an apartment building and runs past a woman pushing a baby carriage. We then see a quick series of photographs that act out how this woman came to have the baby.
Tykwer clearly understands that audiences can take in information quickly if they have a frame of reference. Here, every revelation is woven into the fabric of the story's world. Each revelation offers the audience new, fresh insights into the possibilities of this world.
Returning to the story, a woman speaks emotionally about her affair with Lola's father, who listens impassively.
On the street, Lola passes a young man on a bike who offers to sell it to her. When she refuses, we see quick shots of his being beaten on the street, his wounds being treated by a nurse who takes care of him, then his marrying the nurse.
Lola runs by a driveway, distracting a driver, who has an accident with a car carrying three menacing young men.
Lola runs by the bum with the money her boyfriend lost without recognition.
Meanwhile, Lola's father's lover presses him for a commitment. The reason, a revelation that's she pregnant.
Lola then runs into a bank. That answers the question of why she's come here. The bank guard speaks to her. We're being introduced to all the characters we met in the crowd scene at the beginning of the story, those seemingly chance encounters are revealed to have a dramatic purpose.
Lola runs past a woman in the hall. Images of the woman's life end with a car accident, then a grave stone. We see the significant events for each character as Lola passes them in this series of quick snapshots.
Lola bursts in on her father just as he commits to being the father of his lover's expected child.
Lola begs for money to save Manni, her boyfriend of a year. Her father doesn't know who Manni is. This quick revelation sums up Lola's relationship with her father.
The father offers to help, a surprise. But, as he walks Lola down the hall, he explains the nature of his help, that he's leaving Lola's mother - and Lola - for a new life. He ends by telling her he's not really her father, and asks the guard to throw Lola out.
Stunned by these revelations, Lola has to deal with the fact that she has only minutes left to meet Manni.
As Lola again runs along the street, an ambulance driver, distracted by her, almost runs into a pane of glass carried by some workman.
Manni stands outside a store he intends to rob. With a split screen, we hear Lola pleading that he wait for her.
He turns to go into the store, gun drawn, just as Lola, in the background, arrives to stop him. Instead of stopping Manni, Lola then becomes an accomplice to the robbery.
They run from the store, but are cornered by the police, and Lola is shot in the heart. This is a wrenching revelation.
As Lola lays dying, we go into her eyes and through them to her memory of an intimate scene with Manni. Lola presses the obtuse Manni to express his real feelings for her.
The scene ends with Lola saying, "I have a decision to make."
We return to her, dying on the street. "I don't want to leave." As she speaks the words, a bag Manni threw in the air is intercut with the red phone in the air, and finally Lola says, "Stop."
We then return to the beginning of Lola's journey to try and save Manni. The same 20 minutes will be replayed.
A subtle point, it is Lola who decides the story needs a different outcome. As a character she has come fully to life and demands to shape her own story destiny. The storyteller, Tywyer, slips further from view.
This time, as Lola races to save Manni, events have a different outcome. A bully trips Lola. Will this change the outcome of what happens? Yes. When Lola runs by the lady on the street, the woman now has a different life. She wins the lotto. The boy on the bike dies as a junkie, revealed by that quick series of photographs.
This time, because Lola has been slightly delayed, Papa gets the news that his lover is pregnant, but he might not be the father. This additional revelation puts Papa in an entirely different mood when he sees Lola. But, his mood turns to anger when Lola tells his lover where to get off, and Papa hits Lola.
She leaves, crying, but this time, Lola steals the guard's gun. Lola robs the bank. Just before she leaves the bank, she drops the gun. Outside, a wall of heavily armed cops are waiting for the bank robber to emerge. Lola's face registers her shock. As she expects to be shot, the cops wave her away from the door. They're waiting for a 'real' bank robber to exit, not a young girl with red hair.
A very funny revelation.
Resuming her race to save Manni, Lola asks the ambulance driver for a ride. He refuses. Distracted, he runs through the glass pane.
This time she arrives in time to stop Manni from robbing the store, but as he walks toward her, he's run over by the ambulance driven by the still-flustered ambulance driver.
Once again Lola's love for Manni has failed to save him.
This time we return through Manni eyes to their intimate night. Manni wants to know what Lola would do if he died, and she responds lightly. Same evening, same characters, entirely different emotional context. Now, Manni accuses Lola of being quite able to move on in life if he died as if their relationship meant nothing.
The scene ends with Lola saying, "You haven't died yet." We return to the dying Manni on the street, who says, "No." Again the 20 minutes will restart.
Again, as Lola passes people on the street, quick snapshots show their lives going along another track. This time, the bicycle thief, deflected by Lola, comes across the bum and offers to sell him the bike. Lola, deflected, now lands on the car that would have had the accident, preventing the accident. And the driver recognizes Lola, a new revelation.
This time, it is the man in the car who interrupts Papa's exchange with his lover. He drives off with the father as Lola comes around the corner.
This time, Manni sees the bum with his money. He gives chase, but can't catch the man. The chase, however, leads to Lola's father and his associate having an accident with the same white car with three toughs. Lola's father is seriously hurt.
This time as she runs, Lola asks the universe for helps. When she's almost run down by a truck, she looks up and sees a sign for a Casino. Going inside, she can only afford one gambling chip through the generosity of a cashier. She places a bet on the roulette wheel. She wins. Places the same bet. Someone wants to remove her for not being properly dressed, but she asks for - and is granted - one more game. As the ball rolls, Lola lets out a shattering scream that breaks glasses. She is demanding the universe help her.
She wins.
She has the 100,000 marks.
And two minutes to reach Manni.
Is this plausible in reality? No, but this is a story. Stories are about being true to what they promise an audience, that magical story journey. And the revelations of this story create that journey.
On the street, Manni uses his gun to stop the bum and get his money back.
The audience now knows something Lola doesn't.
On the street with the ambulance, Lola gets into the back of the ambulance when it stops to avoid the pane of glass. Inside the ambulance is Lola's dying father. He reaches out his hand to her. She takes his hand and comforts her father. Instead of dying, he comes back to life.
Is this plausible in reality? Again, no. But does it add another layer of depth and humanity to this story? Does it offer a heart-felt revelation about these characters that is satisfying? Yes.
The time is noon. The 20 minutes are up. Lola exits the ambulance. Looks each direction for Manni. Calls his name. No answer.
Then Manni gets out of a car down the street and joins Lola.
He asks, "Did you run here?"
How little he knows. The audience shares this moment with Lola.
Manni asks, "What's in the bag." Lola only smiles.
Fade to black.
This movie is a great example of how revelations about characters can both drive a story forward and how subtle changes in events can change the fabric of a story. In a weakly told story, a character could transform from an old man to a little girl to a soldier and not much would change. Here, everything changes. The world of Run Lola run is alive to the creative spirit of its characters. It's a wonderful example of the power of revelations to reveal the potent inner worlds.
Tykwer is also the writer and director of Winter Keeping, a potent, quiet story that also deals with issues of how chance events affect relationships.
(This article appeared in ScreenTalk, The International Magazine of Screenwriting.)
There is a version of this movie that is dubbed in English. The voice are high and airy, and nothing like the intense German voices of the real characters.
The main actress in the film, Franka Potemke, has played the girlfriend in the recent Bourne movies, and deserves credit for giving those movies a deeper emotional core to go along with the action.
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