Buckland-Warren-Puzzle-Films-Complex-Storytelling-Contemporary-Cinema

Time, Place, and Character Subjectivity in Run Lola Run 147Notes1 The acousmêtric voice is an unsettling, floating voice “that speaks over theimage but is also forever on the verge of appearing in it” (Chion 1994, p. 129).2 For a close reading of the circular camera trajectories in Run Lola Run, seeMergenthaler (2006, pp. 278–83).3 See Grieb (2002). In relation to Run Lola Run’s opening “shot,” Schuster kickingoff a ball, one is immediately reminded of ludologist Markku Eskelinen’spolemical remark: “Luckily, outside theory, people are usually excellent indistinguishing between narrative situations and gaming situations: if I throwa ball at you, I don’t expect you to drop it and wait until it starts tellingstories” (Eskelinen 2004, p. 36). For a general introduction into the narrativeprinciples of computer games, see Atkins (2003) and Jenkins (2004).4 “Despite the protagonists’ criminal activities, Tykwer reinforces ouridentification with them by using 35mm film to shoot those scenes in whichthey appear. The crispness of these moments contrasts with the less sharp,more grainy texture of those scenes where Lola and Manni are absent andTykwer uses video” (Evans 2004, pp. 107–8).5 The linearity that Bordwell refers to here seems to be limited to the series ofevents as they are presented in the fabula and exclude the level of the actualtextual articulation. For an account of how these two levels interact in establishingor undercutting a “double linearity,” see Bal (1997 pp. 81–99).6 “The linear, which is to say [. . .], succession, consists of journeys to and fro:it combines with the cyclical, the movements of long intervals. The cyclicalis social organization manifesting itself. The linear is the daily grind, the routine,therefore the perpetual, made up of chance and encounters” (Lefebvre2004, p. 30).7 Lefebvre himself generally envisaged “rhythmanalysis” as “a new field ofknowledge” (2004, p. 3). More moderately framed, it offers a differentanalytical terminology and alternative methodology of understanding anddescribing the spatio-temporal organization of complex cultural systems:As a methodological tool with practical ambitions, rhythmanalysis “does notisolate an object, or a subject, or a relation. It seeks to grasp a moving butdeterminate complexity” (2004, p. 12).8 “At no moment have the analysis of rhythms and the rhythmanalytical projectlost sight of the body” (Lefebvre 2004, p. 67).9 In a reflexive methodological move, again reminiscent of Foucault’s revisionof the subject/object relationship, e.g. in Discipline and Punish (Foucault1979), Lefebvre considers the body not only as the first object of analysis, butalso as that which defines, to a certain extent, the mode of analysis itself. Thisis at least what is implied by the neologism of “rhythmanalysis” which wantsto be more than just an analysis of rhythms (Lefebvre 2004, pp. 19–26).