Return to Intro to Film syllabus
Updated April 8, 2007
ENGLISH 114: INTRODUCTION TO FILM, Fall 2006
Section 2: Monday, 6:00-9:30 p.m., Professor Larsson
Week 11, April 2, 2007
Run Lola Run/Lola Rennt (Germany 1998)
Director and Writer: Tom Tykwer; Production Design: Alexander Manasse; Cinematography: Frank Griebe; Editor: Mathilde Bonnefoy; Music: Renihold Heil, Johnny Klimek and Tykwer
Cast: Franka Potente (Lola); Moritz Bleibtreu (Manni, Lola’s boyfriend); Herbert Knaup (Lola’s father)
Summary: Lola’s boyfriend Manni has lost 100,000 deutschemarks (about $56,000 in U.S. dollars in 1998) that he was supposed to deliver to a drug dealer. Now, if Lola cannot find money replace it, Manni will resort to robbery. Things go wrong, but there may be another chance or two.
Questions for Discussion:
1. Why did Manni lose the money in the first place? What does that chain of events suggest about how the rest of the narrative will develop?
2. How does Lola decide on a plan of action? What kinds of things interfere with her attempts to get the money?
3. What happens the first time that Lola tries? Why do you think she gets another chance?
4. How does this film play with plot time in order, duration, and frequency of events? Why is time manipulated in this way?
5. What is the role of editing in handling the uses of plot time in this film? In what other ways does the joining of individual shots contribute the development of the characters and story?
6. What do you make of the opening statements in the film? Should we take any one of them more seriously than another? Should we take any of them seriously?
Editing:
(Opening of Vertigo as example)
Joining shots together to create a continuous film.
Four basic devices for joining shots:
1. Cut
2. Fade (Fade-in/Fade-out)
3. Dissolve
4. Wipe
· Cut is instantaneous
· Other three all imply some change or transition in time and/or space of the narrative.
Editor/director have to consider different ways each shot or scene relates to the next:
1. Graphic relations: How each shot looks (color, direction, line, form, etc.)
2. Rhythmic relations: How long each shot is compared the shots before and after
3. Spatial relations: Where characters are in relation to the setting and to each other; where the camera or viewer is in relation to the setting and characters
4. Temporal relations: When the plot action is occurring within the context of the overall story; what events the plot emphasizes or leaves out
First two apply to almost any film
Spatial and temporal relations apply especially to narrative films
Run Lola Run puts special emphasis on rhythmic and temporal relations
Time in Run Lola Run:
Plot Order:
Each repetition of the action includes some flashbacks (and flashforwards?) to past (or future) story events, including events in lives of minor characters
Plot Duration:
Each repetition of the action almost matches screen duration to plot duration
Part I: Lola arrives in 18 minutes of screen duration but more than 20 minutes of plot duration.
(Sung by Dinah Washington):
What a difference a day makes,
Twenty-four little hours
Part II: Lola arrives 16 minutes of screen duration, just under 20 minutes of plot duration
Part III: Lola arrives in 19 minutes of screen duration, just 20 minutes of plot duration
Plot Frequency:
Key events in Part I are repeated in Parts II and III, but slight changes in action lead to changes in duration and in results.
Implied or Explicit Meaning in Run Lola Run
Explicit:
T.S. Eliot, from “Little Gidding” (in Four Quartets):
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
“After the game is before the game.” --Sepp Herberger (German soccer coach)
“Mankind, probably the most mysterious species on our planet. A mystery of open questions. Who are we? Where do we come from? Where are we going? How do we know what we believe to know? Why do we believe anything at all? Innumerable questions looking for an answer, an answer which will raise the next question and the following answer will raise a following question and so on and so forth. But in the end, isn't it always the same question and always the same answer?”
“The ball is round. The game lasts 90 minutes. Everything else is pure theory.” --Sepp Herberger
Implications:
· Life is a matter of chance and repetition
Symptomatic:
· Wish-fulfillment: ability to play life over, like a video game
· Get better at it each time
Referential Meaning:
· Use of spirals (stairs, bar, picture in casino) refer to Vertigo, but not in terms of character or tragic consequences of Hitchcock film.
Example of “post-modern” filmmaking:
· Narrative as play, refers to other narratives
· “Meaning” in life is not emphasized as goal
· Breaking or bending rules of time, space, narrative
Tom Tykwer on Run Lola Run:
“I wanted [the film] to grab viewers and drag them along, to give them . . . a wild chase with consequences. During the editing the important thing for me was timing, because . . . you have to have time and also allow the audience time to make sense of what they’ve seen. Creatively speaking the biggest challenge was not making the leaps ahead in time appear like breaks in the action, to make all the transactions flow into each other . . . The time-space continuum gets taken right off its hinges without anyone really noticing . . . “