Run Lola Run Presos Critique -- Story Analysis

I. Interpretation of the film as it related to your assigned section and use of film language.
I believe that the interpretation that we had of the film was highly accurate and well supported. We included an introduction of Tykwer's life so that we could relate the film back to his own style, thus adding validity to our analysis of the film. For example, we discussed time as a heavy motif in Run Lola Run and we discussed its influence on the film. In this film Tykwer showed the role of coincidence heavily in life. He presented us with 3 different plots that start in the same manner, the only difference that occurs is a time difference. Either Lola does something late by a few seconds, or she is early a few seconds. This time difference creates several different outcomes not only for her life, but also for the lives of others. That is presented through the flash forwards that we see of people whose lives intersect with Lola's. We believe that this analysis is very accurate and intelligent because it is a new type of view of the film, and it ties back with Tykwer's obsession with time so it can be a plausible analysis. However, I feel that we could have used much more film language to describe our analysis of the film. Unfortunately, we excluded a lot of film language opportunities because we forgot about that criteria on the IB Film rubric. Instead, we used film language only a few times, and had we used it more perhaps our ideas may have been articulated more clearly.

II. Strengths of your presentation
Again, I feel that our analysis was very intelligent and cohesive. We all reviewed our slides together and made sure that they all cohered. So, none of the ideas that we had were repetitive, but they were all fresh and somehow relevant. By doing this our conclusion of our presentation seemed much more interesting. That is because Daniel and Alexis's presentations all hinted to small motifs in the film such as the motif of coincidence. Of course, this motif could not have been deeply analyzed until we covered the end of the film. That is why i gave a more comprehensive analysis of the motif of coincidence. By doing this, we added tension in our own presentation because our audience knew that we kept mentioning coincidence in our presentation, but they were never given a full analysis of it which is what they wanted. Therefore, they became more interested in our presentation I believe. All in all, I feel that the content of our presentation was very original and interesting, and the way we formatted our presentation was also very effective.

III. Challenges and Areas for Improvement
Despite having great written format in our presentation, our actual presentation lost a lot of its flare because of nervousness. Again, I feel that Alexis and Daniel all had great ideas but at certain points during the presentation they became very nervous. Alexis's voice began to fluctuate as she became more and more nervous. Daniel became so nervous that he forgot to include some key points in his presentation. As i spoke i noticed that i moved around a lot and that may have distracted the audience a lot. The only way we can alleviate these presentation problems is by practicing more. We had plans to practice during an entire day, but Alexis unexpectingly became busy with her personal life so we couldn't practice. Also, we had a lot of plot in our presentation which i was aware of but felt was necessary. Since we were critiqued on it, however, I suppose that a lot of it could have been scrapped. Next time we will make our presentation more concise, and we will practice more in order to avoid nervousness during our actual presentation.

The Lost Brother -- Fall 2011 Treatment

A boy struggles as he does pushups. Sweat drips down his face. Still, in pain, the boy does one more pushup. The alarm goes off at 6:00.The boy becomes scared. The alarms rings again. The boy's face becomes more and more frustrated. The boy's hand slams it to turn it off. He sits on his bed, and there is a calendar behind him. It reads "6:00". The boy sits there with a blank stare on his face. There is a dark shadowy figure of a man standing in the doorway staring. The boy doesn't see him though. The lights go out. Long shot of the house with all the lights going off. We hear a loud scream. cuts to black.

It's a bright day outside. From a distance away we see two boys walking towards the camera. They skip around a few rocks to get to a cliff side. They boys start to look over the cliff. The younger brother pushes the older to the edge of the cliff [playfully], the older brother gets angry and starts yelling at his brother. Then the older brother pushes his younger brother towards the edge, but this time his brother goes over the cliff.

The boy is running from something. It's the same shadowy figure chasing him. The boy wakes up from his dream. We are in his room. His alarm clock readsis 6:00 exactly. His face his worried. As the older brother exits his home, a shadowy figure enters the garage, but he is unseen by the older brother.

The older brother runs away from the cliff, as he walks towards his home thoughts rush into his head. He doesnt know what to do; he doesn’t want to go to jail. “You were never with him” echoes in his mind. He returns home, and a week later “Missing” posters of the younger brother are posted all over the city.

We are back in the room. The boy does his daily routine of pushups. The boy stands up and turns to the mirror. He looks to the mirror to see the same dark figure in the reflection, standing outside his window. The boy turns to the window to see no one there. The clock reads 6:00. Someone is at the window. The door mysteriously opens. The man stares at the clock, and then looks away, as if time no longer has any importance. He doesn’t finish his final set of pushups, instead he just sits waiting for someone to enter through the door.

News report reports that bloody footsteps were found going away from a cliffside and to the main road. A month has passed, the blood testing is inconclusive. The older brother turns the TV off, and he tells his mother that nothing interesting was on. Then the older brother reflects on himself, and continues to live.

Pictures of the older brother appear. He has led a decent life, without much suffering or trouble. He got into working out soon after the incident. Him and his brother always wanted to be bodybuilders.


We are in the house. It is almost 6:05. The ticks get slower and slower. A shadowy figure enters through the door. The man looks up.

The house has no lights on, and it is dark outside. The man says to the shadowy figure [still outside of house] “I’m sorry, brother. I didn’t think you’d make it.”

A loud scream is heard from outside the house.