Movie Analysis: Run Lola Run

Register to read the introduction… The course between her apartment and the bank is filled with obstacles from dogs to treacherous stairs to baby carriages to street traffic to sidewalk hogging nuns to bank guards to bicycle riders to... Each time she runs into an obstacle or certain other stranger, the director gives us a flash forward of how that collision effects their lives.

Whenever this happens, the camera moves away from her, showing in brief periods composed of a series of still images the futures of these individuals, which change in each story depending on the minor differences in the circumstances of their encounters with Lola. For example, Lola bumps into a female pedestrian and we are shown in a series of flashes her anger leads to an argument with her spouse which leads to a divorce which leads to a downward emotional spiral ending with her becoming an alcoholic …show more content…
Each of these versions, because of the various accidents the characters go through and the choices they make, has a different outcome. In one of the versions of the movie, the dog trips Lola and injures her ankle, making her behind schedule so that a car that had previously hit her now drives off, only to hit the drug leader’s car, letting Manni off the hook.
This idea of how seemingly insignificant incidents can affect people’s lives, and how small occurrences can radically alter subsequent events is used to structure the whole plot of the film. Our lives are, in fact, sometimes determined by events that occur in the briefest of moments, or by some single decision we have made, or even by chances over which we have no control. There is probably hardly a person alive who has not wondered how different his life would have been had it not been for some apparently trivial incident, or someone who has not wished they could ‘turn back