In previous installments of "OST", we've discussed films where the score is extremely well-suited to the action on screen, where the music composed or compiled is almost perfectly matched with what's happening before your eyes. Very rarely, though, does a soundtrack come along where the music seems almost intrinsic -- where the blend of visual and audible art is so seamless, so perfectly intertwined, that it's almost impossible to imagine one without the other. One such soundtrack is that of Tom Tykwer's breakout cult hit, Run Lola Run; its driving, kinetic score helped propel the story action along to such a degree that it can be perfectly encapsulated in the public imagination with one brief snippet of the fetching Franka Potente careening through the urban streets at full tilt, with the thudding, hyper-speed techno her only accompaniment. Indeed, it's a testament to the power of the score that it's become a sort of shorthand for the whole movie, lending itself to endless quotation and parody.
But the Run Lola Run soundtrack has a lot more going for it than mere cultural zeitgeist, and its perfect integration with the film itself is no accident. For one thing, it benefits enormously from Tykwer having composed the majority of the score himself, in conjuction with partners Jonny Klimek and Reinhold Heil, both German session pros, producers and soundtrack veterans. Musically, it's a nearly perfect piece of work, a flawlessly concussive distillation of German techno (and what better to accompany a film set in contemporary Berlin, a city that seems to run on techno?); the addition on the soundtrack album of a number of German techno bands -- most not well known, but with musical sensibilites that mesh exactly with the Tykwer-Klimek-Heil aesthetic -- only makes it better. But even beyond that, there's a reason that most filmgoers carry around in their heads a conception of Run Lola Run that blends together music and art so perfectly. Not only did Tom Tykver take his time (try saying that funf zeit schnell) when composing the score, seeing it from the very beginning not as an accessory to drape over the completed film, but he also did so using the same approach he used when filming the visuals: an extremely tight, disciplined theoretical method which was so precisely and skillfully edited that it seems explosive, wild, even sloppy in the final product. Not content to simply put together a score made up of professionally assayed Berlin techno, Tykver actually gave his compositions a theoretical basis that makes them work even better. The main hooks (including the stuttering, percussive piano riff) from the movie's main themes, "Running: One" and "Running: Two", are actually citations of American avant-garde composer Charles Ives' ensemble piece, The Unanswered Question. A highly disciplined formalist piece, Ives' work only gives the outward impression of wildness and abandon, and thus forms the perfect basis for Lola's soundtrack, which does exactly the same thing.
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