Tommy Tykwer, “Lola rennt / Run Lola Run” (1998)
A mundane plot set in Berlin about a young couple who have to replace a stash of money they need to deliver to a gang leader after one of them has accidentally left it on the train becomes an exploration of the influences of free will, determinism, random occurrence and their consequences in this fast-paced flick. A mostly techno music soundtrack, the use of animation and cinema verite techniques and an appealing main character who acts on impulse and whose colourful look contrasts strongly with her surroundings flesh out the film’s themes and add zip. In spite of the dazzling visual effects and methods used to prop up the story, the message they spin out is a fairly depressing one in which humans are no more than puppets being manipulated by unseen, unconscious forces that pervade the universe.
Lola (Franka Potente) is supposed to meet her boyfriend Manni (Moritz Bleibtreu) and take him to meet his gangland boss Ronnie to deliver 100,000 Deutschmarks. Lola’s moped is stolen so Manni catches the train to deliver the money but panics on seeing ticket inspectors and leaves the train, forgetting to take the money with him. At the last minute he sees a homeless man pick up the money and tries to follow him but fails. He phones Lola at home, blaming her for the loss of the moped and tells her to stump up the money to replace the lost money and meet him at a public phone booth.
At this point the film divides into three versions of how Lola’s quest to get more money and save Manni from possibly being killed by Ronnie turns out. In the first version, Lola appeals to her wealthy banker father for help which is refused and Manni in desperation robs a supermarket. Lola meets Manni but are surrounded by police and the standoff between them and the youngsters ends badly. In the second version, Lola again appeals to her father for help and ends up robbing his bank but again the events that follow on don’t have a happy ending. In the third version, Manni manages to find the homeless man and get the money back from him, the moped thief ends up a cropper in a traffic accident and Lola goes into a casino and wins two bets resulting in takings of more than what she and Manni need to give to Ronnie.
In all three scenarios Lola meets characters whose lives spin out into wildly different directions as a result of her encounters. In the first run, Lola meets a woman pushing a pram, who is later shown being jailed for stealing a baby after losing custody of her own; in the second run, the same woman wins a lottery and she and her family embark on a life of luxury; in the third run, the woman becomes religious. A cyclist who offers to sell Lola his bicycle becomes a hospital patient falling in love with a nurse in the first run; in the second run, he becomes homeless; in the third run he sells his bike to the homeless man who has Manni’s cash. In all three scenarios there is a car crash involving a bank employee and Manni’s boss Ronnie but the details of the car crash differ: in the third scenario, Lola’s father is in the bank employee’s car at the time of the crash and he apparently dies at the crash scene. A security guard may or not may suffer a heart attack in these scenarios and a pane of glass being carried over a pedestrian crossing may or may not be hit by an ambulance (which might be carrying the guard). All of these scenarios emphasise how a chance meeting, a chance coincidence or a chance event may spark off a series of other incidents and events that overall come to have tremendous impacts on the lives of the people they affect directly and indirectly. What decisions Lola may make in accepting or not accepting a lift or fobbing off a vendor might have less influence on people than random events. The various encounters and incidents that occur while Lola is out racing around the streets suggest the universe is much more determinist and that for all she or Manni might do, they and the rest of the characters in the film have much less control over their fates than they realise.
What remains dormant in “Run Lola Run” though is an inquiry into why Lola and Manni are in the predicament they find themselves, why in the first place they are working for a king-pin for a gang and where Manni and Lola got the money they were supposed to deliver to Ronnie before Lola’s moped was stolen. Why does Manni blame Lola for losing the moped in the first place and what does the blame game say about their relationship? When all is said and done, the viewer realises that Lola is not a very resourceful youngster, relying on Daddy Banker to bail her and Manni out of trouble. Lola’s troubled family relationships hint at how a wealthy spoilt daughter of a banker who cheats on his wife might end up in a bad crowd but there’s no suggestion of how the girl can escape such confining circumstances. Director Tykwer appears not to question the social and economic order in which his characters live out their lives and as a result the film suggests no possibility of a change in Lola’s dysfunctional family dynamics: her father will continue to have an affair with his secretary or wind up dead, her mother will stay drunk and zonked out on daytime TV soaps, and Lola and Manni will spiral deeper into the dangerous world of drug-couriering. It’s as if in Tykwer’s world humans are little more than robots being run by programming loops.