Thomas Deane Tucker Assistant Professor of Humanities and Philosophy Chadron State College 2000

Running Out of Frames: Cinematic Excess in Run Lola Run There are many debates on the subject of film narrativity, most of them revolving around the question of whether or not film narratives work through resources and principles which underlie all narrative mediums. Each of the various debates takes it for granted that narratives take place in time. But these debates offer only a glance, often uncritically, from a very wide scope of filmic temporality, and the role of presence is never brought into full view for questioning. The most specific debate in film narratology concerns the role of the spectator in narration and narrative construction, and the most influential approach to this problem is David Bordwells constructivist theory of cinematic narration. While there are alternatives to Bordwells views concerning film narrativesuch as Bruce Kawins theory of mindscreen or first person film, Tom Gunnings concept of narrativity, and Dudley Andrews work on figurationthey all in one way or another offer a false choice between a theory of cinema spectation based on the model of subject positioning and a model of narrative construction that is an implicit critique of such positioning. Each of these narratological theories share in common the practice of formulating, analyzing, and stressing certain narrative strategies deployed by the viewer and/or producer of filmic discourse to guarantee the smooth and stable conveyance of meaning throughout the entire apparatus of 1

cinema. For the most part, narratological theorists depict these narrative strategies with the figure of presence in the foreground, and the temporal complexities of representation seem to simply vanish from sight. A Derridean perspective might leave its greatest impression upon film theory as a strike against this depiction and the resulting belief in privileging the narration, narrator, or spectator as transcendental subjects. A few narrow inroads, however, have been made into film narratology which take into account both the discontinuities of the film apparatus and how it addresses a disunified spectator. Kristen Thompson initiated one of these excursions with her concept of cinematic excess. Thompson argues that film studies shortchanges its critical enterprise when it dwells upon only the classical Hollywood narrative and is shortsighted when it views the role of the critic as being engaged solely in uncovering the intrinsic unifying structures at work in narrative systems. She argues for the need to not only look beyond the classical system for objects of study, but for an entirely new look at the disunifying impulses at the heart of classical Hollywood narratives. We will take a short look at her theory as a crack in the narratological wall that can be more fully breached through the work of someone like Derrida. The object of our analysis will be Tom Twykers film Run Lola Run. Tom Twykers film Run Lola Run has an incredibly threadbare story with a simple premise: The film opens as Lola answers a phone call from her boyfriend Manni, a low-level courier working for a violent crime boss, who calls her in an obvious panic from a payphone on a Berlin street. He had just concluded a routine pickup/drop off, and all that was left to complete 2

the job was to wait for Lola to pick him up and drive him to the rendezvous site with his boss where he would then deliver 100,000 DM to him. The deadline for handing over the cash was noon, but when Lolas moped is stolen, she arrives too late and Manni has already headed for the subway. But in a stroke of bad luck, Manni accidentally leaves the bag of money in the subway car and it is immediately swiped away by a homeless vagrant. By the time Manni calls Lola, his boss is on his way to pick up the money and Manni has only twenty minutes to replace the money or he will be killed. Lola tells him to wait at the phone booth, that she will find the money for him and be there, somehow, in twenty minutes. Manni is not fully convinced and hedges his bet on Lola by persuading himself that the quickest way to get the money, should she stand him up again, is through an armed robbery of the supermarket across the street. Lola rushes out of her apartment, down the stairs and down the street, attempting to get to Manni. Along the way, she hopes to convince her father, who is in charge of a large bank, to help her get the 100,000 marks before the time runs out. The film then focuses on Lola running against the clock and through a barrage of images and music, unpacks a narrative about the interplay of chance and destiny and the fine line between the two. Instead of showing us only one outcome of Lolas hopeless mission, Twyker presents three different alternate realities and possibilities for Manni and Lolas fate. Each alternate scenario is marked by seemingly trivial variations in Lolas path toward Manni, and Twyker uses these to show how the destinies of various people are altered by their contact with Lola. In further experimentation with the presentation of narrative structure, Twyker shoots each of the 3

three versions in the real time of the twenty-minute plot time, and gives them all totally distinct outcomes. Kristen Thompson has suggested that critics consider narrative structures such as the one found in Run Lola Run as emblematic of films capacity for excess, a term she borrows from Stephen Heath. A film, she argues, can be viewed as a struggle between opposing forces, some of which strive to unify the entire work and help to hold the work together for the spectator so he can understand the various structures of meaning put into play (Braudy 487). The excess of a film are those aspects of the work which are not contained by its unifying forces, and arises from the conflict between the materiality of a film and the unifying structures within it (Braudy 487-488). Following Heath, Thompson calls the effect of these unifying forces homogeneity, and states that excess is created when the materiality of the filmic image outruns the narrative structures of unity in a film: A film depends on materiality for its existence; out of image and sound it creates its structures, but it can never make all the physical elements of the film part of its set of smooth perceptual cuesHeath is talking about the classical Hollywood film, which typically strives to minimize excess by a thoroughgoing motivation. Other films outside the tradition do not always try to provide an apparent motivation for everything in the film, and thus they leave their potentially excessive elements more noticeable. (Braudy 487-488) Most film critics, especially those theorists who are accustomed to exclusively viewing and 4

analyzing classical narrative cinema, consider that their role is to focus on the tension between the cohesive elements of a film and its excess, along with how a film works to resolve this tension. These critics discount or outright ignore the ways in which the material aspects of a film are sometimes separated from and often undermine a films diegesis. This is partially due to the fact that classical narrative cinema is so adept at motivating the material aspects of a film that they seem unobtrusive even when placed alongside the narrative. But as Thompson shows, even though critics may often explain the narrative significance of a material detail such as a close-up, an off-screen sound, or a cut, the narrative function still does not exhaust the material presence of that detail within the overall work (Braudy 490). Thompson believes it is the critics job to point out these material elements and their effects of excess as disunifying structures that serve at once to contribute to the narrative and to distract our perception from it, even in classical Hollywood narratives (Braudy 490). Taking her cue from Barthes description of the obtuse meaning he analyzes in still photographs, Thompson argues that in pointing out filmic excess, the critic becomes attuned to the effects of delaying devices in a narrative and describes the movement away from direct progression through an economical structure (Braudy 489). To point out excess is different from analyzing style. Style, as we noted with Bordwell, is the repeated use of cinematic devices and techniques in such a way that the viewer notices them and is able to understand the connections between their specific uses. Style lends itself to analysis as a means for uncovering and describing these relations. But as Thompson 5

shows, the analysis of style neither fully accounts for nor expends the material aspects of filmic techniques. As she notes, Excessive elements do not form relationships beyond those of coexistence, and therefore the critic must go beyond analysis of style as a tool for discovering excess (Braudy 491). Although excess is not equal to style, it is not opposed to it either, since analyzing style might lead the adroit critic to apprehend excess as well. The key to making the process of pointing as systematic as analysis is found in the concept of motivation as a critical utensil for exploring the excessive structures of a film: More precisely, excess implies a gap or lack in motivation. Even though the presence of a device may not be arbitrary, its motivation can never completely control our perception of the film as a material objectA film displays a struggle by the unifying structures to contain the diverse elements that make up its whole system. Motivation is the primary tool by which the work makes its own devices seem reasonable. At that point where motivation fails, excess begins. To see it, we need to stop assuming that artistic motivation creates complete unity (or that its failure to do so somehow constitutes a fault). (Braudy 491) Thompson posits four ways in which the material functions of a film can exceed narrative motivation. We will briefly outline her argument and then discuss how it applies to Run Lola Run. First, Thompson examines the possibility that, although narrative function may well justify the presence of a particular device in a film, it does not motivate the specific form it will 6

take. In other words, its function need not always dictate an individual devices form. Thompson uses as an example the range of camera placements available to Eisenstein for conveying the sense of Ivans impressive character in Ivan the Terrible. Many different framing options would have worked to perform the same function. We might say the same for Welles use of extremely low angles in Citizen Kane to foreground Kane as a powerful figure; other devices could have been used to convey the same meaning. Second, cinematic devices exist through time, and motivation is insufficient to determine how long a device needs to be on the screen in order to serve its purpose (Braudy 492). An easily recognizable visible or audible device may linger on the screen long enough to exceed this recognition and the spectator may be inclined to study or contemplate it apart from its narrative or compositional function (Braudy 492). In this case, the presence of the device works to undermine narrative progression. In another case, the device may be so arcane that it requires an extremely long process of reflection before the viewer can comprehend it. Thompson points out that there is no innate length of time determined by motivation to situate and allow for this type of perceptual activity by the viewer. Third, there is the redundant use of a single motivation to justify the use of multiple devices, even when they vary in form. The repeated use of several different devices to serve the same narrative function begins to strip these devices of their narrative connotations and call attention to themselves primarily as stylistic techniques (Braudy 492). Lastly, there is the way in which a single motivation is used to justify the repetition of a 7

single device: By this repetition, the device may far outweigh its original motivation and take on an importance greater than its narrative or compositional function would seem to warrant (Braudy 492-493). As with Thompsons example of Ivan the Terrible, style in Run Lola Run is so highly accentuated that one cannot help but notice the material aspects of the film. One of the most unique and innovative devices, and a prominent source of excess in the film, is the use of flashforwards. As Lola races against the clock down the streets of Berlin, she slams into various token passersby; a snarling, middle-aged woman pushing a baby carriage, a man pedaling a stolen bicycle, and a sultry employee using the copy machine in her fathers bank. As Lola rushes past these characters, Twyker flashes forward through a series of still photographic images into distinct futures for each character that are altered after each of their brushes with Lola. With each altered scenario, the destiny of each person is again changed after running into Lola. The narrative function of this device is to reiterate the what-if? theme of destiny which redounds throughout the film. It is meant to show how Lolas dash through Berlin affects the destinies of people with whom she comes into contact during her struggle to reach Manni before his twenty-minute deadline runs out. However, this device does not increase our range of story information, nor does it contribute to narrative progression by providing us with any hints as to how the narrative will end. Furthermore, though the use of flash-forwards is itself fairly unconventional, Twyker could have deployed any number of other techniques as a convention 8

for the reordering of narrative events. For instance, he could have chosen to intersperse shots of the bank employees future with shots of Lola running in the present, using editing to provide the illustration of the temporal discrepancies between the two characters. The use of fast-motion photography might serve the same function just as well. Thus, from a narrative perspective, utilizing the material form of still images to connote this sense of destiny is mostly unmotivated. The flash-forwards are excessive in another way: they literally flash by the viewer like a music video. There is no time for the viewer to contemplate the images in the photographs, some of which are obscure and invite speculation. For example, during the first flash-forward into the bicycle thiefs future, we see him getting beaten by thugs who steal his bike, being treated in a hospital, eating lunch with a nurse, then getting married. All of this takes place in less than eight seconds. Even as Twyker cuts back to Lola racing over a bridge, we are left contemplating the arbitrariness of this alternative narrative. Another form of excess is the films repeated uses of an array of cinematographic tricks, including animation, slow motion, instant replays, and jump cuts. It is hard to deny, however, that the prominence of these visual devices does contribute to narrative progression. For example, in the animated sequences of Lola running down the apartment building stairs, there is a semblance of causal progression each time she passes a menacing neighbor and his dog. First she screams and runs by him, the second time she trips over his leg, and the third time she jumps over it. The same is true for the slow motion split screen sequences of Manni getting ready to rob the grocery store as Lola rounds the corner screaming his name. Narrative progression may 9

also be cited as the motivation for the way jump cuts invite the viewers attention to the fast pace of Lolas powerful stride in each of the running sequences, and for the slow motion replays of the red telephone receiver landing in its cradle. All of these elements contribute to the happy resolution of the plot at the end of the film (though the same cannot be said of the story; as far as the storyline goes, none of the three endings can be valorized over the others). But these cinematographic techniques also draw the audiences attention towards their intrinsic formal properties. Of equal interest to the spectator are the comic book qualities of the animation or the degree to which the jump cuts and split screens resemble a video game or music video. The presence of these devices cannot be justified simply by their narrative function, since they go beyond the narrative to reference other media through their form. The way the film extra-narrationally references the conventions of other movies also has an excessive function. In her review of the film for the September 1999 issue of Film Comment, Crissa-Jean Chappell notes the importance of this feature to the films overall style: We cant deny we are watching a movie. We, like Lola, are made of moviesIf Lola is a movie, which genre applies? It contains elements of road movies, lovers-on-the-run, gangster robberies, and most obviously, action, one of the oldest movie formats (and the most highly stylized, la Buster Keaton). Twyker plays with action movie staples, like men crossing the street with a pane of glass. His world has its own logic, layered over a foundation of cinematic reference. The old and the new collide to create something that contains a little of both. (4) 10

Here again, it is a matter of the audience being aware of the cinematic conventions which Twyker references. This awareness contributes little to an understanding of the plot, but much to an understanding of the whole film beyond just its unifying structures. Yet another site of excess that stands out more for its perceptual qualities than the advancement of narrative is the redundant appearance of the color red. From Lolas flaming red hair and lipstick to the bright red telephone, the red grocery bag, the candy apple red ambulance, the blood seeping from Mannis mouth, and the red tint over the death scenes, the motif of red is accentuated and repeated far beyond any narrative utility. In fact, it would be difficult to find anything other than a tangential motivation for the repeated use of the color red as a narrative motif in the film. Other than the blood and perhaps the ambulance, it is not really realistically motivated. One might argue that Lolas hair color is motivated by her characters role as a fastpaced postmodern woman living amidst the bustling hyperrealist setting of modern-day Berlin. Finally, excess is present in the soundtrack. On the one hand, there is the music. As the most wholly non-diegetic element in the film, it is perhaps the most excessive. In every scene, the electronic score almost overwhelms the narrative. The most notable example is the same hypnotic song which throbs repeatedly throughout each running sequence. The only real function the song has in relation to the image track is the way Lola almost seems to run in time to the music. On the other hand, there is the dialogue. Lola repeatedly screams at such a high pitch, she shatters glass. As Manni frantically pleads with Lola for help from the phone booth, the two of them repeat the phrase the bag eleven times, each utterance shot from a different 11

angle. This kind of repetition focuses attention as much on the sound and rhythm of the words as it does on the importance of the lost bag to the plot. The advantage to Thompsons model is that it recognizes the unnecessary binds narrational beliefs such as Bordwell or Chatmans place upon film viewing. As we noted earlier, Bordwell equates film with the process of narration and Chatman to an unfolding of narrative, but both limit spectatorial participation of a film to either constructing or interpreting/understanding only casual chains of action. As Thompson states, in this belief system the viewer goes along a preordained path, trying to correct conclusions, and that skillful spectatorship consists of being able to anticipate plot events before they occur (Braudy 496). And when such a narratological perspective is adapted, there are consequences for the act viewing: The viewer may be capable of understanding the narrative, but has no context in which to place that understanding; the underlying arbitrariness of the narrative is hidden by structures of motivation and naturalization. A narrative is a chain of causes and effects, but, unlike the real world, the narrative world requires one initial cause which itself has no cause. The choice of this initial cause is one source of the arbitrariness of narrative. Also, once the hermeneutical and proairetic codes are open in a narrative, there is nothing which logically determines how long the narrative will continue; more and more delays could prolong the chains of cause and effect indefinitely. Thus the initiation, 12

progression, and closure of fictional narratives is largely arbitrary. (Braudy 497) Comprehension of the narrative plot of a film is only a small part of spectatorship, one that offers a limited understanding of just one of the multifarious levels of discourse found in a cinematic text. And as the viewer puts into play the excessive elements of a filmthose aspects which escape the impulse toward functional unity and are beyond yet intertwined with the levels of conventional narrativehe will recognize narrative as an arbitrary, rather than logical or essential, convention of cinema (Braudy 497-498). But the repetitive plot structure of Lola and its radical nonlinear reorganization of story events mean that Lolas overall narrational system lacks a unified structure which can be communicated wholly to an audience. The narrative structure authorizes none of the three endings, and the viewer has no means of valorizing one over the other. This means that even solely at the level of narrative, Lola is excessive. The most excessive intrinsic element in Lolas narrative structure is time, and one of the ways we can view this excess is through Jean Lyotards concept of rewriting. Most conventional Hollywood films, that is, the norm of narrative cinema, are constructed around an Aristotelean narrative framework and therefore have a linear temporal structure. Aristotles analysis of time posits a now of the present as an absolute point of reference from which one is able to gain a perspective on an event which unfolds in chronological succession. This means that it is not possible to determine the difference between the anterior and ulterior dimensions within the temporal flux of an event without situating the 13

flux in respect to a now. But as Lyotard points out, this now itself is impossible to grasp, because it always vanishes just beyond our reach, dragged away by the flow of consciousness, the course of life, of things, of events (The Inhuman 24-25). Our inability to lay hold of the now is both a consequential and constituent element of our subjectivity. Lyotard goes on to say: So that it is too soon and too late to grasp anything like a now in an identifiable way. The too late signifies an excess in the going away, disappearing, the too early an excess in advent. An excess with respect to what? To the intention to identify the project of seizing and identifying an entity that would, here and now, be the thing itself. (The Inhuman 25) Lyotard is talking about the problem of situating the post of the term postmodernism as a historical entity in relation to modernism. He argues that postmodernism is always circumscribed by modernism, since they both share the same form of temporality which is comprised by an impulsion to exceed itself into a state other than itself (Lyotard, The Inhuman 25). Modern temporality is characterized not only by the promise of its own overcoming, but also by an obsession with the concept of periodization, the marking of the end of one period and the beginning of another. Lyotard argues therefore that the real opposition to modernism is not postmodernism but the classical age, and proposes that the term postmodernism be replaced by the phrase rewriting modernity. The prefix re- replaces post- and writing is meant as a substitute for modernism. Lyotard places the most emphasis on the substitution of re- for 14

post-, and believes such emphasis indicates two essential aspects of the concept of rewriting. The first is the idea of inauguration by way of return, such as when the calendar was turned back to year one with the advent of Christianity: Rewriting can consist in the gestureof starting the clock again from zero, wiping the slate clean, the gesture which inaugurates in one go the beginning of the new age and the new periodization. The use of the re- means a return to the starting point (The Inhuman 26). This is the objective sense of rewriting. But there is a second, more subjective feature to rewriting which Lyotard extracts from Freuds method of psychoanalysis: Essentially linked with writing in this sense, the re- in no way signifies a return to the beginning but rather what Freud called a working through, Durcharbeitung, i.e. a working attached to a thought of what is constitutively hidden from us in the event and the meaning of the eventFreud distinguishes repetition, remembering, and working throughContrary to remembering, working through would be defined as a work without end and therefore without will: without end in the sense in which it is not guided by the concept of an end but not without finality. (The Inhuman 26-30) Abandoning his search for a terminable origin of neurosis, Freud repositioned the relationship between patient and analyst as the practice of working through the analysands neuroses. This means that the analyst must suspend judgment, that he listen attentively to every fragment of speech and sentence, no matter how small, proffered by the patient. On the side of the patient, 15

the rules of working through implies an attitude of free association, to give voice to everything that comes to mind without regard for the logical or ethical value of what links one sentence with another, and without understanding the source or aim of what one is saying (Lyotard, The Inhuman 30-31). Lyotard goes on to appropriate the model of working through for his own practice of rewriting. Working through proceeds by taking a fragment of a sentence, a scrap of information, a word, and immediately linking it with another fragment or unit to describe a scene. In this sense, one never describes a whole scene and therefore never understands a scene in its entirety. One only knows that a scene refers to some pastboth ones own past and others past as a lost time and that this lost time is not represented like a picture but is itself that which presents the elements of a picture. Like working through, rewriting is the process of registering these elements and allowing this picture to be drawn or depicted. But by staging the scene, rewriting is not subject to simply remembering or repeating the past, but is subject instead to a technique (techne) of reorganizing (rather than defining) the forms of the past, a technique which demands the deployment of time between not yet, no longer, and now (Lyotard, The Inhuman 31-35). Thus, the process of rewriting in Lola is enunciated on both sides of the screen. The spectator must work through each narrative fragment of Lolas titular run just as Lola must work through the life altering consequences of even the tiniest choices. Every time Lola makes

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another decision she concocts a new destiny and the old narrative is lost, but only to be rewritten. A new scene is staged. The spectator must allow this scene to be staged, but is free to choose which of the stages to enter, what narrative in which to invest his interest. This is not a matter of subject positioning or of narrative construction, but of framing judgments around open and unfettered narrative structures.

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Works Cited Bordwell, David. Ozu and the Poetics of Cinema. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988. Braudy, Leo, and Marshall Cohen, eds. Film Theory and Criticism: Introductory Readings. 5th ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. Brunette, Peter, and David Wills. Screen/Play. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989. Chappell, Crissa-Jean. Movie Maid. Rev. of Run Lola Run, dir. by Tom Twyker. Film Comment. 35.5 (September-October 1999): 4. Chatman, Seymour. Story and Discourse: Narrative Structure in Fiction and Film. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1978. Lyotard, Jean-Francois. The Inhuman: Reflections on Time. Trans. Geoffrey Bennington and Rachel Bowlby. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1988.

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