Run Lola Run

Comment on how Tykmer uses visual symbolism to represent the manipulation of time and reality in “run Lola run”

Run Lola run explores the events that fate alone controls and displays the constant "what if's" that occur every moment and that can easily change the happenings of the next. The film follows the events between a woman, Lola, and her boyfriend, Mani, who she desperately tries to save from death by helping him obtain a huge amount of money he carelessly lost. It takes you on three different journeys with Lola, all controlled by fate, showing you what would happen in each, and all the "what if's" that provide the foundations for each outcome.

Throughout the film, Lola bumps into people, talks to them, or passes them by. Details of that person's future are shown in a series of still frames. The futures are widely changed from encounter to encounter. In one scenario, a woman who Lola accidentally bumps into wins the lottery and becomes rich in a different scenario, she remains poor and kidnaps an unattended baby after her child was taken away by social workers. In the third scenario, the woman experiences a religious conversion. Several moments in the film show to a supernatural awareness of the characters. For example, in the first reality, a nervous Lola is shown by Manni how to use a gun by removing the safety, where as she does this as if remembered from a previous experience in the second reality. Lola's encounters with Schuster also contain an air of the supernatural.

Run Lola run is also similar to Vertigo (1958) about John Ferguson as a retired San Francisco police detective who suffers from acrophobia and Madeleine is the lady who leads him to high places. A wealthy shipbuilder who is an acquaintance from college days approaches Scottie and asks him to follow his beautiful wife, Madeleine. He fears she is going insane, maybe even contemplating suicide, because she believes she is possessed by a dead ancestor. Scottie is sceptical, but agrees after he sees Madeleine. This movie also uses spirals in the opening scene to symbolise the manipulation of time as in Run Lola run also in a few scenes, Lola breaks glass by screaming, just like Blechtrommel's main character Oskar.

The color red is commonly used as a symbol in film and literature. In Run Lola Run, red is used to symbolize