Run Lola Run Presentation Critique- Writing

My group--Jen Lewis, Edgar Tejeda, and myself-- discussed Run Lola Run's writing. My slides analyze the characters' speech and motifs, symbols, and metaphors; they are the second through fifth slides.

My first slide explains the use of dialogue in the film. It's used sparingly, and as such that which is present is informative and easy to understand--for example, the homeless man's first words are, "The bag!" Other problems are revealed through actions and cinematography; Manni's reaction to realizing that he has left the bag on the train, and the cutting between this and the bag show his new problem. These in conjunction contribute to the realism of the film, in that they reflect daily life more than, say, a lengthy internal monologue would.

My final three slides each depict a motif, symbol, or metaphor that I observed. The first was the 100,000 marks, which symbolized Lola and Manni's problem and solution--their problem is recovering 100,000 marks in order to save Manni's life, while the solution is to do just that. The metaphor I identified was the soccer game. It is a metaphor for the entire movie in that none of the three scenarios are the "true" one--they are all theory. This, by extension, also foreshadows the multiple endings as each is entirely theoretical. Lastly, I stated that spirals are a prominent visual motif throughout Run Lola Run. Unlike circles, which return to the exact same point endlessly, spirals are unwound, meaning that they return to similar points until they end. This is akin to the characters' actions throughout the three scenarios in that they each act similarly, but not exactly the same, until each scenario ends. The spiral in other ways than literally: the roulette ball spinning around the wheel until it comes to rest in a slot, or in the cinematography as the camera panning around the telephone booth until stopping in front of Manni and the blind woman.


I feel that a majority of my strength laid in the content. Excuse my conceit, but I took much pride in the examples I found and even more so the fact that I was able to articulate almost everything I had prepared without using notecards. This came as a result of not using too much actual text on the slides. Additionally, I felt I spoke well in that I paced myself--I wasn't nervously blurting out sentence fragments or mumbling, and paused briefly to gather my thoughts.

However, my presentation was pretty average, at least by my standards. While, as I stated, I did not use notecards, I did occasionally resort to reading off of the presentation when I lost my train of thought. I read completely off of the screen when reading Edgar's slides, although that should be excusable. Lastly, in the future I would definitely discuss the presentation more in-depth with my partners.