I know this post may be a little late but after looking at some of my notes, I took during the screening, there are some things I want to weigh in on about the film. One thing I thought that the director, Tom Tykwer, did well was incorporate a lot of repetition in his shots and quick cuts to express a fast moving pace throughout the film. Many of the shots helped establish the sense that Lola was running out of time to save Manni and how fast she had to think and react to give her an advantage. One shot in particular is at the beginning of the movie when she is thinking of how she can help Manni and throws the telephone in the air. There are quick cuts between Lola and the flying telephone and right when she decides what to do the phone lands neatly on the hook. With the use of the types of cuts and repetition at the beginning of the film, the audience is able to get a good sense of pace for the rest of the movie. Another thing that struck me as important that I did not hear during our class discussion was the ending credits. Maybe I am thinking too far into it but I found it strange that they were backwards, meaning they ran from top to bottom. I have never seen that in a film before and was very curious as to why it was done that way? I hope that if someone is reading this they can give me their thoughts on the matter of why the director decided to do this.

“The most important social function of film is to establish equilibrium between human beings and the apparatus”

After a series of installments in an essay dedicated to “Art in the age of its technological reproducibility,” Benjamin arrives in the 16^th section to a point about a certain “equilibrium” between humans and the apparatus of film making.  What Benjamin ends up referring to here is the “insight into the necesseties governing our lives” that film can provide.  I found this to be a very interesting statement, especially with the specific examples that Benjamin uses – “…its use of close-ups, by its accentuation of hidden details in familiar objects, and by its exploration… through the ingenious guidance of the camera.”  Benjamin is drawing our attention to the very attention to detail that films provide us with.  It is a fact of viewership, and vitally important to theory arguments surrounding the falseness of the apparatus (and of course for Benjamin’s larger arguments about the falseness of the reproduction of art let alone a physical landscape).

If any one of us were standing in a room with one of our friends, our attention may be drawn to the little trinkets that he or she possesses, in an effort to better understand that person.  Say, for example, there is a special pen on his or her desk – it might draw our attention.  But our scope of those things is rather short as the moment is instantaneous, and presumably we are more focused on the person themselves.  In films, however, the close-up that Benjamin refers to serves to replicate an impossibly attentive version of this same situation.  Filming a scene in which we stand in a room with our friends can employ a greater range of perception than a real-life version of that instance ever could.  If there is a special pen on the desk, we might get a close up, HD image of that pen, providing us with a hyper-real interpretation of that person’s belongings (and implicitly their personality, style, etc).  “Clearly,” as Benjamin says, “it is another nature which speaks to the camera as compared to the eye.”  Benjamin refers to this as the “optical unconscious” – that is, things we consciously have no knowledge of as human beings in day to day life, but rather rely on the apparatus of a camera to reveal.  In this same light, Benjamin reinforces his point by noting that previous theory on the existence of two worlds by Heraclitus – the collective real world and the solitary dream world – is now “invalidated by film” due to this cinematic exposé on the unconscious elements of everyday life.

Bringing it all back to Benjamin’s first statement about the equilibrium between human beings and the apparatus, he validates the existence of this unconscious world by noting the “possibility of psychic immunization… by means of certain films in which the forced development of fantasies or masochistic delusions can present their natural and dangerous maturation in the masses.”  To paraphrase,film can take our multifaceted individual minds and tranquilize them using what they at first thought could only exist in a dream world, and now exists in a conjunctive “imagination land” on screen,provided by the ability of a film to depict the “unconscious.”

http://knowmore.washingtonpost.com/2015/02/06/kurt-vonnegut-and-the-shapes-of-stories/

Run Lola Run. Damn, a hell of a film. It reminds me of the refreshing quality of  foreign film and decentralizes my perspective so I can be reminded that film is not purely American-centric. There are other countries making films. Which brings me to my question of the day, what are people’s favorite foreign films? Here are some of mine

(In no particular order)

Blue is the Warmest Color

8 1/2

Once Upon A Time In the West

Y Tu Mama Tambien

The Hunt

Amelie

CIty of God

Run Lola Run

The Holy Mountain

This list just reaffirms that i’ve got to start watching much more!

In considering the Gorbman piece I was curious as to people’s reactions to what she put forth. In many ways as was discussed in class the piece seems as much a summary of common, if not explicitly stated, knowledge. Sound as a bridge, emotional cue, etc. is ubiquitously known but do we believe in all that is written. It seemed to me as if some of her rules are not only regularly broken in current Hollywood Cinema but foreground the issue of sound in cinema. Dialogue itself no longer seems a contentious issue, it is a mainstay, but I do believe that musical score or soundtrack should be discussed in both its effectiveness and in its necessity.

As to my first point, Gorbman describes sound as a background instrument, unobtrusive, quietly and subtly moving the film. Now take for example a Interstellar. Nolan has gone on record stating that there were moments in the film in which he considered dialogue supplementary to the BOOMING score, I mean the score blasted your ears off. He was not concerned with the dialogue being audible as he believed the soaring score to be more representative, symbolic, metaphoric? of the local mood of the film. Music of such volume immediately draws attention to itself thereby conflicting with Gorbman’s notion. Does this make it any less effective? In the case of Nolan’s film, and this is of course a subjective statement, I felt it overwhelming and a tad bit manipulative, though I’m willing to concede that i’m not 100% on that statement, it did at least seem in parallel with the trajectory of the film in the moment. Is music that draws attention to itself always manipulative? In a sense, yes. It is intentionally drawing the audience towards a certain mood, perspective. Now the degree of manipulation is of course a large gradient. There are degrees. Some is straight out swindling, the result of a poorly done scene that requires music to make up for its deficiency. Others is earned. I believe that The Shining was brought up in class as an example. The music draws attention to itself and in other moments fades into the background. The Shining is a hell of a film, but if its score creates a certain mood for the audience is it therefore manipulative? Yes. But it seems earned in its manipulation as if it becomes a character in and of itself and is not part of a cheap tactic to elicit an emotional response. We as an audience are quite aware of the difference between a Kubrick score and a score for some lesser movie. We can feel the contrived nature of the lesser film, but what separates the two? I’m not sure I’m able to put a finger to it but it’s an interesting question for discussion. I will say this, it seems to me that a score only escapes it manipulative effect if it is utilized for a purpose beyond the manipulation of an audience to feel a certain emotional trait. In The Shining the audience is already creeped out and frightened as hell, the music only adds to the mood, it’s not forcing the audience into that mood.

This clumsily brings me into my next query: the necessity of a soundtrack or score. One of my favorite films is No Country For Old Men. God I love that film. NO score in it. At all. And I never even realized. I had to find out through the internet. Music has its purpose in film, this is without doubt. It is able to express fluidity and feeling, elation, pathos and catharsis that finds no place in dialogue. Nonetheless, I’ve always had a nagging belief that a truly great film works without a score. That is unless the film is trying to draw attention to the score and what it is showing or expressing. This falls in line with any other discussion of filmic purpose. There’s got to be a reason for something to be in a film, a reason with weight to it. It should sink in water.

Maya Deren was a renowned experimental filmmaker who believed the main objective of art was to create new realities to add onto the already accepted ones. While some of the authors we’ve previously discussed believed art replicated reality and others believed it replaced it entirely, Deren’s mindset is plotted directly in-between these two opposing perspectives. One of her main points in the article describes the art of the controlled accident. The recognition of a known reality plus the reality of the image itself creates a reality that is derived from a situation that is not fully controllable. Through the use of properties such as slow motion, negative images and disjunctive editing, an alternate reality is formed. She goes on to say that a major portion of the creative action occurs through the manipulation of time and space in both pre production and postproduction. In her experimental films, Meshes of the Afternoon and At Land, the manipulation of space and time is very evident and profound.

In Meshes of the Afternoon, she combined reality with a layer of cinematic illusions allowing the audience the ability to jump back and fourth between what is real and what is falsified. She elaborates that this ability defines film as its own art form, different from any other medium. It is clear that Deren is not concerned with showing the world everyday reality. Both of her films are not as much narrative pieces, as they are expressions of art. After one screening, it was very difficult to understand what the main objectives were in either film. However, upon further investigation, and taking into account all of Deren’s viewpoints such as the controlled accident, manipulation of time and space, and different editing techniques, the themes became much more clear.

Tom Tykwer’s film Run Lola Run, utilizes the concepts of time, destiny, and fate to portray a story of two lovers in an unfortunate and seemingly impossible situation. At the beginning of the film, two quotes are presented; one from T.S Elliot and one from Herberger. T.S Elliot’s quote dealt with the concept of exploration and time as a cyclical process, whereas Herberger’s statement referenced life as a game. Although the two quotes seem rather unrelated, when brought together in the context of the film, they shape the main message depicted in the story.

In addition to the clever and rich depth of the storyline itself, the use of various editing and filming techniques made it visually pleasing as well. The use of a flashback scene in the beginning of the film effectively set the pace of the story as well as setting up a clear and understandable context for the rest of the film. Furthermore, the butterfly snapshots sequences of random strangers lives at first seemed random, but later added to the underlying theme of how choices affect our destiny. Maya Deren’s message about how editing enables a creator to dictate a new reality is revealed in this film in various subtle manners. For example, Deren uses the example of making a staircase seem longer than it is simply by varying the film angle used and this similar technique is used in the scene of the telephone falling back to its original position. Overall, this fast paced action film was highly entertaining and well made.

In Maya Deren’s piece entitled, “Cinematography: the creative use of reality” the author discusses the importance of editing by saying, “the editing of a film creates the sequential relationship which gives particular or new meaning to images according to their function” (Deren 153). This concept of using unique editing to bring new meaning to a film is a theme that’s evident throughout the course of Run Lola Run and allows the filmmaker to create a non-linear story that explores the idea that each of us has a fate that can be changed by something as simple as bumping into a woman or arrive late to a bank. One editing element the director used that I found interest was the cuts between Lola’s interactions with people around her and then the projected fate of those she interacted with. This sequence used quick cuts and a screen that says “And then…” to create a visual striking shot that also seconds as a creative way to show the potential futures that the characters Lola interacts with could have if one minor part of their day was adjusted. I think that a shot like this really embodies Deren’s point about the importance of editing because without these sequences it would be incredibly difficult to illustrate the idea that every choice we make has a consequence that can change the course of ones life. By choosing to edit the film in such a way that fragments of the future are revealed through flashes the filmmaker gives new meaning to Lola’s every action and stresses this idea that the choices we make have a ripple effect on those around us.

In 1916, Hugo Munsterberg scoffed at the idea of sound being a part of cinema:

Last class some of us scoffed at the idea of 3D films, declaring that they would never be a form of film worth viewing. Looking at how off the mark Munsterberg was in regards to sound in film, I wonder if the claim that 3D cinema distracts from the true intentions of cinematic endeavors will remain true into the future..?

From the early 1900s, when sound was just making its way into cinema, to the scores written for films of the Classical Hollywood era, to the present day, the use of sound has changed in innumerable ways. As Gorbman outlines in Critical Visions, sound of the Hollywood era was meant to set the mood- not dictate it, to be inaudible, and invisible. Just as directors like Maya Deren, Truffaut, and Twyker have bent the rules of formalism in filmmaking, the formalistic guidelines for sound in film have been broken since the Classical Hollywood era as well. Sound no longer remains in the background, but is often used as a device to break the fourth wall. As I mentioned in class, the use of sound to break the fourth wall is executed by P.T. Anderson in his film Magnolia (1999) as can be seen in this clip:

The music used in film, which in Classical Hollywood was typically an orchestral score, is now often synonymous with films of recent years. When I think of Toy Story, I can’t help but think of Randy Newman’s “You’ve Got a Friend in Me”. Jerry Maguire? – Tom Petty’s “Free Fallin'”, which, as can be seen in this clip, also serves as a sound bridge between two scenes, and is used as both diegetic and non-diegetic sound.

Munsterberg could not have predicted how sound could would used in films since his era, nor can we predict how it will be used in the future. Hopefully we can learn from Munsterberg’s miscalculation, and appreciate the ability of film to be molded and shaped in ways that we cannot fathom in the present.

Tykwer’s 1998 film Run Lola Run was a very enjoyable and useful film for us to watch.  There were many elements from the readings and discussion that came into play with the film and it was also a fun experience. The film uses editing very effectively to show many different things. The very fast cuts of Lola and Manni and the phone, the quick frames of the futures of the people Lola interacts This type of editing added to the rising suspense of each time Lola would run to Manni, which contrasts with the final moments of each “run” which were in slow motion. I enjoyed reading about the film in Understanding Film Theory as well, this provided more insight into the film. For example how the 180 degree line was consistently broken to make us feel somewhat lost while we followed her through the city. Editing techniques like this greatly added to the films overall feel.

There were a few other ideas in the film that I found interesting, I brought one up in class, which was the very beginning in which we saw the security guard and he said something along the lines of “90 minutes each time, the rest is just theory.” I am still confused as to why he said this, and why they chose the security guard to say this. Toby brought up something that I had noticed too, in which the first scene were we see the father and his lover the quality of the footage diminishes greatly, almost as if we are watching a soap opera, which could be what the director was going for. Another thing we touched on was the idea of Run Lola Run being a fairy tale, how her scream and touch have powers, and I never thought of this before, I had seen the film before but did not make this connection, I see this now and can notice the relations between the film and Propp’s hero theory.

I also enjoyed the use of animation in the film, I do not know why it was chosen, (the stair case, intro, and when the father comes out as animation briefly) but I enjoyed it, a creative touch to an already creative film.

Nick Tassoni