Run Lola Run (5 Stars)

This film is considered by most Germans, critics and film fans alike, to be the best German film ever made. It typifies the often repeated statement:

"American films are intended to entertain the viewer. German films are intended to educate the viewer."

I admit that this is a generalisation and there may be exceptions on both sides, but as someone with an extensive knowledge of German cinema I have to agree with the statement. German directors want to make the audience think. Sometimes they want them to think about the past, such as the Second World War or the division of Germany. Sometimes they want the audience to go home and think about metaphysical concepts.

This film falls into the latter category. At its heart this is a treatise on chaos theory. A simple occurrence can make a difference between life and death, and change the lives of all those connected. The same story is told three times. Lola (Franka Potente) gets a phone call from her boyfriend Manni (Moritz Bleibtreu). He has lost 100,000 Marks ($60,000) from a drug deal, and if he doesn't pay it back within 20 minutes he will be killed. He plans to rob a supermarket, but Lola thinks she can get the money for him by asking her father, a bank manager, for a loan. So she runs through the streets of Berlin to get the money and give it to Manni.

When Lola runs down the stairs of her house she meets a youth with a vicious dog on the stairs. The first time she runs past them. The second time the youth trips her. The third time she jumps over the dog. This simple action, how she gets down the stairs, has drastic consequences. In the first case Lola dies, in the second case Manni dies, in the third case Lola's father dies. There are also big changes in the lives of people that Lola meets.

A repeated symbol in the film is the circle. Clocks, the circular stairway, the rotary phone, the roulette wheel. I'm not sure what this means. The cycle of life? Death and rebirth? The film opens with Sepp Herberger's famous words, "After the game is before the game". These cryptic words refer to football, and mean that if you lose there's always another game. There is also a quote from T. S. Eliot: “At the end of our exploring we shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all of our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time."

Click here to view the trailer.