Run Lola Run

Berlin, which is the capital of Germany, is the setting for the movie “Run Lola Run”. Berlin is the country’s largest city with 3.5 million people. This could be compared to the size of Los Angeles and its 3.8 million people. Berlin is located in north eastern Germany. Germany has many neighboring countries. The country nearest to Berlin is Poland which is about 55 miles to its border.

"Run Lola Run" did a good job of familiarizing the viewer on landscape of a German city. A good plus in the movie was that it was hard to miss anything because it plays three times. Culturally there were many things that jumped out at me during the movie. The first thing that I noticed was the road systems. In the first scene we see Lola running down a very skinny one way street with cars parked on both sides. This was probably a side street, but you still don’t see many streets like that in the U.S. One kind of vehicle you did not see were SUV’s. Maybe the roads are too skinny for these. There were many forms of transportation that were shown, including trains, subway and bicycle. Cycling is quite popular in Berlin. 1 tenth of all trips made in Berlin are made on bicycle. After researching cycling in Berlin I found that it is actually illegal to ride a bike in the street. One must stay in the designated bike lanes. That got me thinking… The bum in the movie that offers to sell his bike to Lola is driving his bike like a mad man in the middle of the street. Quite fitting that he stole the bike and now is rebelling, driving illegally in the street. Further research on cycling in Berlin presented some alarming facts. 60% of Berlin’s 2007 traffic fatalities were cyclist and pedestrians. Which was evident in the film when Lola gets ran over.

Did anyone else notice all the graffiti? There was plenty of graffiti everywhere as Lola ran through the streets. I wasn’t sure if this was added to give the film some edge or if it was actually graffiti on the natural landscape. Not knowing what to think I did some research on graffiti in Berlin. Turns out graffiti is quite popular in Berlin. The roots of graffiti culture are traced back to West Berlin in the early 1980’s. Graffiti in Berlin is referred to as “Bombing” or “Tags”. In Berlin there are actual graffiti stores where you can buy your supplies. The local police have done little to stop the art. Police make on average of 15 arrests in one week and the punishment is quite minimal. 35 to 50 million dollars in damage are caused by graffiti yearly in Berlin. So this information would explain all the graffiti on the run to find Manni.

The setting around Manni seems like a major intersection. A couple of cultural things that stood out in Manni’s scenes were the yellow phone booth and the Bolle Supermarket. I knew that in Britain they historically had the red phone booths so the yellow must have been culturally German. Looking up German phone booths on the internet it was confirmed that originally they were made yellow. Now most phone booths in Germany are glass with gray or pink trim. Some phone booths are card only and some are coin only. This would explain Manny borrowing the old lady’s card. These cards are not credit cards, but are called “smart cards” and are exclusively used for these phone boxes. You know what would have been real handy for Lola and Manni? Cell phone would have helped them out a lot. I guess the film was made in 1998 and Cell phones were completely main stream at that point. Speaking of being handy, that is actually what Cell phones are called in Germany, “Handys” or also called “Mobiles”. In the phone booths background stood the Bolle store. At first I thought it was a sunglasses store and then when Manni went to rob it, it was a supermarket. This sparked my interest. Turns out Bolle Supermarket is a traditional chain of Berlin. It was founded by Carl Andreas Julius Bolle in 1933 and became nationally known as Bolle in May of 1987.

There were a few other things I observed in the movie that I found interesting and was curious if anybody else noticed. Did anyone notice what Lola’s mom was drinking in the opening scene? Jack Daniels was her choice of drink. I found it interesting that she was drinking an American whiskey. Also I was unsure of this, but was the guy who crashed his moped in the final scene the guy who stole Lola’s moped in the beginning? That would be a fitting example of Karma if it was. A funny thing I noticed in the beginning was when the bum offers to sell his bike to Lola and Lola declines his offer and in the next scene Lola runs past two unattended bikes. I guess Lola really wanted to run. One last thing that I was trying to put together was the meaning of Lola’s ambulance ride with the bank security guard. I am guessing he had a heart attack, but the ambulance ride was in the third scene and Lola robbed the bank in the second. Anyway, I enjoyed the movie a lot and have already recommended it to others.