A Simulated World, or Unruly Lola’s Games

Marta Bartkowska

Abstract

Bartkowska claims that Tom Tykwer’s film Run Lola, Run has been executed in the form of a computer game. The cyclical character and repeatability of events are the features of the represented reality. Nothing is final, and the heroes themselves can influence course of events although they are just puppets in the hands of Demiurge supervising the proper course of action in this created world/game. Thanks to the Demiurge the characters can question the finality of the events and grant an extra life to one another. Although time is closed within a closely defined frame, it can be reversed. Space is also transformed in the film. It has the shape of a computer board, and constitutes a “film mock-up” of the world. It operates according to patterns and simply feigns its existence. Tykwer neither paints psychological portraits of his characters nor develops their personalities as it is unnecessary in a computer game. Characters appear on the screen in the same costumes, carry the same props, and are permanently fixed to a given fragment of space. They are the graphic elements of the game, or carriers of specific and permanent functions.