Film Studies II: Run Lola Run (1998)

Run Lola Run, when I came across this film’s name, I didn’t expect that this is a film that full of running scenes. Run Lola Run is a German thriller film written and directed by Tom Tykwer in 1998. This film was starring Franka Potente as Lola and Moritz Bleibtreu as Manni.

This story is about a girl, Lola receives a strange phone call from her boyfriend, Manni, to ask Lola to drive him to deliver the 100,000 Deutsche Mark he just collected from his recent crime to his boss, Ronnie. However, Lola failed to arrive on time as her moped was stolen. Manni has no choice but to took a subway train. He starts to panic when he saw ticket inspectors as he did not have a subway ticket. He leaves the bag with cash in the train. When he realize and wants to get back the bag, he saw a homeless man see the money and it was too late for him to get into the train again. Lola has twenty minutes to meet with Manni otherwise he will rob the supermarket as he lost the money. Lola run as fast as she can to meet Manni but she failed. She accidently shoot by a nervous police after they rob the supermarket. Then Lola recall her conversation with Manni about their love. Then the film starts to keep looping from the first scene. The film returns to their phone call.

In this film, editing plays an important role as it pushes and enhances the narrative of the film. The expressive and narrative capabilities of the moving image would not be anything like as rich as they are without editing. There are many ways to edit the film such as cut, dissolve, wipe and etc. Editing also offers filmmakers four basic area of choice and control which are graphic relations, rhythmic relations, spatial relations and temporal relations. In this film, there are a scene where Lola runs out from her room and run down from the stairs is in animation. This shows the graphic relations that indicates Lola has started another run. The rhythmic relations showed when there are a lot of fast cuts and shorts shots in the film showing Lola keeps running. This will enhance the suspense of the film and makes the audiences feel that Lola is really in rush.

Besides that, continuity editing also been used in this film. Eyeline match editing is used. Eyeline match is a cut in which one shot a person looking at something off-screen and the other shot is thereby posited as the object of that person’s gaze. When Lola is running, she passed by a lot of people, I feel like it is kind of showing POV of Lola while looking at them. Then the people also will stares at Lola. For example, the old lady that Lola first bumped into or the lady who works in her father’s bank.

Split screen also being used in the film. This shows in the scene where Lola runs as fast as she can to meet Manni so that he won’t rob the supermarket. In the other hand, Mannie is waiting for her appearance.

In conclusion, Run Lola Run makes me surprised because this film is much more interesting that I think. Different kind of editing techniques can attract audience’s attention and make us more understand the story or meaning of the film.