the groundhog day project

I was watching Krzysztof Kieslowski’s Blind Chance ( Przypadek ) earlier tonight. It’s basically Run Lola Run structurally, with a little more of the gravitas of Sliding Doors — and I did not expect to use the word gravitas in connection with Sliding Doors . I like the movie, but that just wasn’t a word I would have put to it —a slow-paced alternate-reality story about, well, chance and choice in decided one’s fate. It starts each of its three segments like Run Lola Run does, minor variations that don’t really mean anything, but those lead to more significant opportunities in the life of Witek (Boguslaw Linda) when he a) makes his train and meets an old communist and joins the Communist Party, b) misses his train, knocks a guard to the ground and receives community service which eventually leads him into an anti-Communist group and religion, or c) misses his train but has no altercation with the guard, meets a girl on the platform and goes to medical school. It got me thinkin...

Yesterday, I watched Somewhere in Time before watching Groundhog Day . I managed to write the entirety of the entry before Groundhog Day really got going. Today, I watched Run Lola Run ( Lola Rennt ) and am now watching Groundhog Day . Subtitles and a much faster pace than Somewhere in Time kept me from typing anything until now, ten minutes into Groundhog Day . I say this to point out how little things affect bigger things. That's a major element of Run Lola Run , which doesn't involve a time loop, per se, but does involve just over 20 minutes of time repeating twice. The big thing hidden in the smaller moments of the film is that tiny changes in our interactions can lead to big changes in the lives of others--chaos theory, the butterfly effect, whatever you want to call it. The basic premise: Lola's boyfriend Manni just lost 100,000 Deutsch Marks he's supposed to be handing off to a guy named Ronnie--something to do with organized crime and diamonds--who will ...