Run Lola Run is a German thriller film written and directed by Tom Tykwer. The story follows a woman named Lola (Franka Potente) who needs to obtain 100,000 Deutschmarks in twenty minutes to save the life of her boyfriend Manni (Moritz Bleibtreu).
The film touches on themes such as free will vs. determinism, the role of chance in people’s destiny, and obscure cause-effect relationships. Through brief flash-forward sequences of still images, Lola’s fleeting interactions with bystanders are revealed to have surprising and drastic effects on their future lives, serving as concise illustrations of chaos theory’s butterfly effect, in which minor, seemingly inconsequential variations in any interaction can blossom into much wider results than is often recognized. The film’s exploration of the relationship between chance and conscious intention comes to the foreground in the casino scene, where Lola appears to defy the laws of chance through sheer force of will, improbably making the roulette ball land on her winning number with the help of a glass-shattering scream.
Source: Wikipedia
The film explores the concept of alternate reality where each set of choices Lola makes pushes her and the people she encounters in that reality, onto a different path. However, she can still influence the outcome to the extent possible as per her capability/volition. The taking and presentation of the film, gives it a dreamy look, with audience having to decide if the first two versions of reality actually happened or she thought about it in her head, and may be the last one (with the happy ending one) is the version that actually happened. (In films like ‘Groundhog Day’ and ‘Edge of Tomorrow’, the main character is conscious of the previous versions, and to some extent, Lola also does. But in Run Lola Run there is a lot more ambiguity.)
On the other hand, one can also imagine a scene/reality from the past and try to make amends. This brings us to a famous dialogue from ‘The Shawshank redemption’, during Red (Morgan Freeman)’s parole hearing.
Red : There's not a day goes by I don't feel regret. Not because I'm in here, because you think I should. I look back on the way I was then: a young, stupid kid who committed that terrible crime. I want to talk to him. I want to try to talk some sense to him, tell him the way things are. But I can't. That kid's long gone, and this old man is all that's left. I got to live with that. Rehabilitated? It's just a bullshit word. So you go on and stamp your form, sonny, and stop wasting my time. Because to tell you the truth, I don't give a shit.
Overall, Run lola Run is a must watch.
Tailpiece: Tapsi Pannu’s ‘Loop Lapeta’ is an official remake of Run Lola Run, and available on Netflix.