Run Lola Run
Herbert Knaup, Armin Rohde, and Joachim Krol.
Don’t be put off because Run Lola Run begins with two weighty quotes, one of them from the last of T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets, “Little Gidding.” I didn’t quite catch what it said–the person seated in front of me decided to stretch at that point–but I can’t believe it has any serious bearing on what follows. I take it to be a quintessentially Germanic reflex gesture claiming some sort of significance, like the elaborate presentation of a Gothic clock that follows, or the pixilated city crowd that comes next, or the narration about “man” as “the most mysterious species on our planet,” which reminded me of Edward D. Wood’s early musings in Glen or Glenda? Yet the jazzy visual effects and punchy sounds accompanying the clock, the crowd, and the subsequent credits are the basic text here, and all the ponderous trimmings are basically fashion statements, not pertinent commentaries on what’s to come.
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A few stabs at classification:
Stylized continuous action has been a staple of movies from the beginning, and it might be argued that Tykwer is only giving us a late-90s version of something like Buster Keaton. This isn’t a baseless comparison insofar as the movie gets a certain amount of literal as well as figurative mileage out of the pleasure of watching Lola run. Yet as soon as the movie has to conjure up something resembling a world and a plot–or three separate worlds and three separate plots–the comparison starts to break down. No matter how fanciful and graceful Keaton got, he was always moving through a world and a plot that had a certain logic and fullness that wouldn’t allow for any cartoon substitutes. By contrast, the world of Run Lola Run is jerry-built, put together to produce certain momentary effects–a world in which Lola herself as a physical presence is no less disposable and malleable. You might say it’s a plot and a world that keep moving but wind up nowhere, since the three endings cancel one another out–a world where anything can happen and where, as a consequence, nothing matters.
And when that rationalizing starts shoving art movies out of art houses to make room for more no-brainers, the studios may think they’ve proved we’re just as stupid and undiscerning as they’ve claimed all along. Run Lola Run celebrates that stupidity with verve and energy; it’s guaranteed to keep you glued to your seat with your mind blissfully unoccupied. But at least for its conceptual kicks, it might have celebrated some form of intelligence if it were playing at 600 N. Michigan or at Webster Place, where the standards are usually lower.
