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Director's Statement
How did you get the original idea for doing RUN LOLA RUN?
I always start with the image. I get an image in my head and I start wanting to get it moving, to build a story around it and then make a film out of it. In RUN LOLA RUN it was a woman running, seen from the side in medium close-up. I think the idea of making a dynamic film is a primal arge with filmmakers That's why action films are so poptilar: because film can get across the sense of speed.There's something dynamic, something explosive about film. But film cm also transport emotions. A running person brings it all together, explosive dynamics and emotion, because it's when people move that they express things: despair, happiness, or whatever. I wanted RUN LOLA RUN to grab the viewers and drag them along, to give them a roller-coaster ride. I wanted die sheer, unadorned pleasure of speed. A wild chase with consequences.
DEADLY MARIA, WINTERSLEEPERS - and now RUN LOLA RUN. How does RUN LOLA RUN relate to your other work?
My three films are totally different, but I keep on recognising myself in them. Certain elements that interest me keep on resurfacing. Time, for instance, and die way time gets manipulated.The dramatic principle of creating time is, I feel, one of the most interesting aspects of filmmaking.You can relate what happens in 20 minutes or in 20 years. RUN LOLA RUN for me is a continuous journey - whereby the most important thing is that the viewer feels that Lola really has lived through die various possibilities we show in the film. And not only the last 20 minutes.That the audience transcends the timespan emotionally and starts really sympathising with Lola as the film progresses - and ends up wanting her to be finally rewarded for everything she's had to go through - Manni's death, and her own dying.
How was RUN LOLA RUN conceived visually?
The film was storyboarded very precisely indeed, because so many details were involved.Where exactly was which person standing in which scene? How does the camera only show what's important and nothing else? On top of that of course we're also telling a story that is played out during a particular interval of time on the säme day.That means that the weather and the light both have to be identical. One really crazy aspect was all the clocks that keep coming into shot everywhere - we spend hours discussing whether it was seven minutes or six minutes to twelve in some scenes. Or maybe even five to twelve?? The continuity people definitely worked overtime, anyhow! The visual concept was already extremely important during the preparatory phase, which is also why the screenplay has so many technical details.
Music plays a very large part in RUN LOLA RUN. lt resulted from a cooperation between two muslcians and yourself...
As with "Winter Sleepers", I worked an the film music for RUN LOLA RUN with Johnny Klimek and Reinhold Heil. The very idea of anyone else composing music for any film of raine is like a nightmare for me. The wrong music can screw up a film completely. Music can make a good film into a great one, and a reasonably good one into a bad one. Because music intensifies everything. I mean, just imagine "Once Upon a Time in the West" without the music! Music plus images equals film. I think, write and cut in a very musical way - so it was obvious that I'd want to take care of the soundtrack, too.l didn't want any standard techno music through the film.With the soundtrack for RUN LOLA RUN I've made a pop record for the first time, a real dance record.