In this chapter, we discussed the cinematography. Cinematography is the part focus more on the tome, motion, movement, angles, shots, and cinematic point of view. It helps audiences understand a film better by using different fixed-frame movements or different angle shots. Through these ways, the director gets to introduce the part he/she wants to emphasis to the viewers, and focus on the meaning of the whole film. A two hours film is connected by those motions of the camera shots, different angles will make audiences notice about details, and at the same time make audiences wonder and expect. Also, various uses of camera shots and the tone of a scene can lead audiences’ emotions, fear, happiness, sadness, danger and so on.
Different angles and shots decide the position of the audiences, are we watching the story? Or at this moment we are standing in the scene? And so on. In this week film Run, Lola Run, cinematography has been used perfectly. The film tells a story of Lola saving her boyfriend by getting 100 thousands dollars in 20 minutes and run to him. It is kind of scientific, because Lola makes the time goes back for three times. This first time, she didn’t get the money, robbed the supermarket with her boyfriend, but Lola was accidently shot by a police.
The second time, Lola robbed her father’s bank, got to her boyfriend on time; however, her boyfriend was crashed by a car. The last time, Lola got the money from casino, and her boyfriend got the lost money back, they become rich at last. The main story is simple, but the complex camera work makes the film outstanding. At the beginning of the film, the narrator begins to talk, the camera is running between a lot of people, it feels like you are one of those people and all of you are thinking the same question, which is where are we came from and where are we going to.
Then, each time when Lola runs, she meet some people on the street. That is the really interesting part of the film too. The director used photographs to show their lives after they meet Lola. Each time is different, including the experience of Lola running on the street, a lot of details showed whether she is delayed or ahead. There is a scene I found really interesting, which showed up twice in this film, is each time Lola or her boyfriend died. The camera goes through their eyes with a birds-eye view to a extreme close up.
Then, come out from the eye going into a scene with Lola and her boyfriend lying on a bed-like thing naked. At this moment, the tone of this thing becomes red and it is really quiet that we only hear Lola or her boyfriend talking. I didn’t understanding these two scene when I was watching this film. After the film end, I rethought about the main idea of the film, and I realized what is the meaning of the use of the color and what is their conversation about. The read represents the blood, that’s where everyone came from.
The birds-eye view and close up makes audiences can only see their faces clearly, because we came to this world with nothing except ourselves. Their conversation is about love and life, Lola didn’t get the answer she wants, so for the first time, she went back and ran again. The second time, her boyfriend didn’t get the answer he wants either, so Lola went back again. This is a great film, uses plenty of cinematography elements to express a thoughtful main idea. Someone might film a documentary on the same idea, but Tom Tykwer is a fantastic director and made the film so incredible.
