Review of Run Lola Run (1998) by Tiberio S — 12 Jun 2011

Anytime a movie is playing with fate and how fate alters through decision-making (not inevitability) it runs into the danger of never being anatomically correct. In fact, since the body can never be built as a whole, no movie of these sorts can ever be taken as more than metaphorical.

Run Lola Run is just this kind of movie that paints a portrait suggesting what effect our conscious decision-making truly has. It's an optimistic film because it places importance on how an individual's decisions can have powerful effects on the lives of the surrounding world.

And, despite how difficult it is to scientifically detail the innumerable changes of fate our decisions cause, this film does a better job than most time-travel chronicles. Lola, as far as we know, may or may not be a time-traveler herself.

But this movie isn't about traveling through the space-time continuum, it's simply about how a single scenario can be played three different ways, with or without the literal use of time-travel.

In fact what's so interesting here is that while sci-fi time-travel movies (like Back to the Future or The Time Machine) beg us to take them literally in terms of scientific cause and effect, Run Lola Run, which only asks us to watch a non-literal expressionist painting, is more scientifically correct.