Stop time

“Time waits for no man and it certainly will not wait for me” is a saying that we all take as a fact, but this fundamental truth is tore apart in Run Lola Run, because we can observe how they play with time in order for Lola to be in time at the end. At a certain point in life we all get to wonder what would have happened if we had gotten a minute earlier or a minute later, would everything stay the same? Or would everything change? This movie proves that one action depends on the one before; in this case our three runs depend on how Lola faces the dog when she is storming down the stairs.

Time waits for no one and after one action happens, all its consequences start developing and there is no way of stopping them. When Lola decides to grab the gun, the path things took changed and all of its events led Lola to her dead. Every act is part of a small chain or series of events. We can see Lola’s encounter with the dog as an unremarkable event, but it is the one responsible for how things turn out, even the smallest event of all is a link between actions and its consequences. We can either see life’s decisions as fate or chaos, in the movie we get to see how fate works because things always happen for a reason.

The decisions taken at a specific moment in time have great repercussions on how things turn out. In the second run we can observe how Lola bumps into a woman and the woman’s fate completely changes, in this case it turned out for the better she gets to win the lottery. In Run Lola Run the moment that changes everything is Lola’s confrontation with the dog in the stairs.  When one thing changes the answer is never the same. There was an ambulance and some guys carrying a piece of glass, not mattering what both of them had a specific task to fulfill, Lola encounters them in each one of the runs, but the outcome was never the same, due to Lola’s timing.

Drive is necessary in life in order to get things done. In Lola’s life motivation was love, her reason for doing everything was Manni, saving him was her reason in each of the runs. No mattering what she needed to do in order to help him, she would do it without hesitation. There is always a downside to every situation. In Lola’s case was the fact that her motorcycle got stolen, this unleashes a chain of unfortunate consequences.

Run Lola Run is a movie that totally depends on its managements of time. Decisions and its timing unleash a series of events that are responsible for the facts that make up fate. One event is responsible for the next one and so on. Run Lola Run illustrates down to perfection this anti-chaotic structure of consequences. We can perfectly observe how facing the dog changes Lola’s fate either for better or for worse (making her be early or late).