Run Lola Run
Wish I'd mentioned this one sooner - tonight at 7:00 is the last night you can check out this frantic whiplash movie at the Music Hall before it disappears forever. (Well, it'll likely show up in a few months at Olde Town or Atlantic Video, god bless 'em). Still, this is one indie that's worth seeing on the big screen; it's the most gleefully anarchic film to come along in a while, rolling around in the storytelling possibilities offered by film as e.e.cummings did with text.
Director Tom Tykwer's strategy is to throw every visual trick at the screen and see if it sticks; surprisingly, most of it does, as it serves to emphasize the action rather than compensate for it. The film is a little light on plot (summed up thusly: the athletic, super-cute Lola has 20 minutes to come up with $100,000 and dash across town to deliver it to her well-meaning but naive boyfriend who miffed a drug deal, or else he dies), which Tykwer works around by telling the 20 minute story three times.
Three alternate ways, mind you. Lola's hopped-up-adrenal charge to save her man is shown differently each time, as small changes in circumstances build to radically different conclusions. What if you hadn't stopped to get that bagel this morning and pulled onto the highway 4 minutes sooner? Maybe you would have been the one blindsided by that 18-wheeler. Maybe getting the freshly squeezed OJ instead of concentrate is what led you to have four kids instead of one. Maybe pausing to pick up a quarter eventually makes you a lobsterman rather than a paralegal.
Tykwer makes the thrice-told story interesting not just by demonstrating how our decisions interlock with circumstance to alter our existence, but by making Lola's panic visually fascinating. Clever camera tricks, dizzying animation, quick edits, black and white stock, slo mo, fast mo, less is mo - you name it, it's here. What could be the cinematographer's wank off equivalent to an Eddie Van Halen solo instead is not virtuosity for virtuosity's sake, but communicates Lola's desperation and drive. It also makes for the best running joke of the movie, one that neatly illustrates the theme; as Lola interacts briefly with passers-by (whether by speaking to or bumping into them), the camera cuts to chart the next 30 years of their existence in 10 seconds of quick stills. It can be hilarious or horrifying to see a life summed up so briefly, so effectively.
While the film is ultimately more eye candy than soul food, it's a far cry from empty visual posturing and it has a big heart. We don't get to know any of the characters well (Lola as the principal, after all, spends most of her time sprinting hither and yon), but at only 82 minutes it never wears out its welcome, and a film this kinetically inventive and charming is welcome indeed.
- Jared O'Connor
MOVIES
All Content © 1997, 1998, 1999 Jared O'Connor and Michael Baker