Run Lola Run Critique

Our presentation focused on the Ideology aspects of the film Run Lola Run. We also inspected some of the cultural aspects of the film.

We first looked at the cultural aspects of the film. The film reflected a lot of the ideas that were prominent during the New German Cinema era. It was during this era that young directors explored new things and wanted to break away from the visual style of the time. They wanted to explore ideas that were not seen in cinema at the time. Some of these ideas are seen with Twyker's focus on feminism and having Lola be the protagonist. There is a gender switch in the traditional roles of the characters. Manny is seen more as the damsel in distress as opposed to the hero figure. Some of these ideas were also effected by the German youth at the time. The film's upbeat and modern approach was designed to appeal to the youth as opposed to an older audience.

Next we looked at Game Theory and how that was seen in the film. As an ideology, the game theory explores how people's decisions effect each others. This is clearly seen in the different endings of the film. Each time, the characters end up choosing different paths, resulting in different outcomes. This film is almost like a visual presentation of the game theory.

Lastly we looked at Post-Modernism. This is the idea that the values and perspective of the individual is placed higher than the collective perspective. Subjectivity is valued highly in post-modern films as opposed to objectivity. Twyker explores how the world can be meaningless and that it's up to the audience to interpret the film. He presents 3 completely different storylines to help emphasize this. The director is more interested in presenting a compelling film as opposed to making a film that makes sense.

Some of the challenges that we faced was just finding the topics to talk about. We really had no knowledge of these ideas prior to our research. And because we had no knowledge on these topics, made it difficult for us to understand the ideas within the time frame since these ideas were very complex and debated upon.

However I think in the end we gathered a vast amount of information that was relevant to the film. It was actually surprising the see the final product because we explored these ideas thoroughly and in depth. The coherency and the relevancy of the analysis also was surprising because everything fit together well. Also because all of the topics were new, I felt that we succeeded in capturing the audience's attention. This was most relevant on our discussion of the game theory. Michael did a good job with describing the idea and incorporating that with the rest of the film. Jenevieve did a good job exploring the ideas of the german youth especially with how the youth affected the film and the intended audience.