Modern German Tale of Crime and Punishment  Tom Tykwer’s Winter
Sleepers , from a screenplay by Mr. Tykwer and Anne-Françoise
Pyszora, based on the novel Expense of Spirit , by Ms. Pyszora,
was made in 1997, just before Run Lola Run , and what the two
films have in common is a furiously kinetic energy that reminds
us of the roots of cinema in the contemplation of motion. Of
course, the full flowering of cinema required the transformation
of motion into emotion. And it is in this realm where the merely
mobile becomes luminously lifelike, where characters and
dramatic narrative intersect, that opinions may differ on the
esthetic achievements of Run Lola Run and Winter Sleepers . That
is to say, if you didn’t like Run Lola Run , you probably won’t
like Winter Sleepers , and even if you did like Run Lola Run you
may like Winter Sleepers less. As for the great mass of
moviegoers who avoid foreign language films with subtitles like
the plague, the only virtues I can recommend are the helicopter-
borne moving-camera