First of, the writer and director of the film is Tom Tykwer, who is from Germany but has had international success with his films. "Run Lola Run" is one of his films that apparently reached farthest internationally. I think it is important to note the writer/director because he is what makes this film have international significance. More than just being an NC State student watching a foreign film, Tykwer is an artist who has repeatedly manage to achieve international success. In our class we learn a lot about international politics, religions, businesses and such that connect people globally, but art also unifies the people of the world.
On to the plot of the actual movie though. The female protagonist is Sissi, a nurse in a psychiatric hospital who grows very close to all of her patients. In the beginning of the film she receives a letter asking for her help with the affairs of a friend's dead mother. While out, Sissi gets hit by a truck, which is how her path crosses with the male protagonist, Brodo.
Brodo, in the beginning, is living with his brother and has great troubles controlling his emotions. Unable to find work, he robs a grocery store and indirectly causes the accident that leads to Sissi being it by the truck. He finds Sissi unable to speak or breathe, so in order to save her life he performs a tracheotomy. He walks with her to the ambulance, to escape from the police which is also the motives which led him to found her pinned under the truck in the first place. Sissi holds on to his hand until she passes out. He leaves her after she is under proper medical care, leaving no name. Sissi is left with nothing but a button from his coat, but knows she must find this man again. He is the one.
She actually goes to one of her patients, who is a blind man, and asks him to retrace the route of her savior. She manages to track him down, but he has no interest in her or any other woman. We learn more about Bodo then. Bodo and his brother Walter, who is eomployed as a secuirty guard at a bank, have been planning a robbery. At night he has hallucinations that lead him to embrace a hot stove. When Sissi is at Walter's, he tells her Bodo's bad dreams or hallucinations are about his deceased wife who died in an explosion at a filling station while Brodo was in the bathroom. When Bodo returns home though, he kicks Sissi out.
Walter and Bodo rob the bank, which Sissi visits at the same time. An alarm is tripped and Walter is shot by a secuirty guard. Sissi ends up helping them escape by preventing the secuirty guard from shooting the brothers more. Walter makes it to the hospital but ultimately dies. His last words to his brother are "get off the toilet, Bodo." This is a reference to his wife's death, and how Bodo has yet to move on from it.
After this, Sissi hides Bodo in the institution, but he ends up being treated as a patient due to his mental breakdown over his brother's death. It is during his time there as a patient that we learn the day his wife died, him an his wife had been arguing at the gas station. He went to the restroom after the argument, but saw his wife intentionally throw a cigarette into a pool of gasoline.
Sissi wants to leave with Bodo, imagining having a deep, husband wife relationship with him one day. However one of her other patients, Steini, calls the police on Bodo out of jealous over the attention he receives from Sissi. He even attempts to kill Bodo by throwing a toaster into his bath. It is then that we learn through a flashback that Steini had killed Sissi's mother the same way. Bodo saves himself and chases Steini into the attic. The police arrive, and Sissi realizes the truth about her mother's death. She follows Steini tot he roof. THere he offers to jump off the roof to atone for his sins. She says no, however, and "you're not going to jumo anyway." She then grabs Bodo's hand and jumps with him into a small pond.
The last scene was rather confusing. Bodo and Sissi and in a car at the gas station his wife died at. "Past Bono" comes from the restroom and sits in the driver's seat, next to Sissi. Present Bodo is sitting in the back. Past bodo is crying while he drives, and when Sissi reaches over to try and wipe his tears, he pulls away to wipe them himself, pushing her away. Present or real Bodo is disturbed by this, and leans forward to cover past Bodo's eyes, forcing him to stop the car. He orders past Bodo to get out, and Sissi and him leave him standing in the middle of the road.
I believe this final scene symbolizes Bodo letting go of his past, or "getting off the toilet." This is one of the major themes of the film and can be universally related to. The film was chalk full of universal themes though. Death, suicide, love, crime, etc. Characters lose their way through the bank heist and criminal activity, as well as emotionally, all of this tangling up their lives. The director does a good job of showing the many layers of their characters, especially emotional instability. At the beginning of the film when Bodo applies to a job at a funeral home, he gets fired for crying of all things. I understand why this movie was chosen to celebrate Valentine's day through the clubs, but I think the greater themes of this film has to do with the universally understood state of not having control of one's emotions and past, as well as the great feat of letting one's past go.
All and all the movie was long, but artistically enjoyable. The length was understandable when one considers the immense layers Tykwer writes into his characters and story lines.
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