• Puzzle Films – Complex Storytelling in Contemporary Cinema (Paperback / softback) 9781405168625
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Puzzle Films
Complex Storytelling in Contemporary Cinema

Warren Buckland (Edited by), W Buckland (Author)

9781405168625, Wiley

Paperback / softback, published 19 December 2008

256 pages
23 x 15.4 x 1.6 cm, 0.381 kg

"Barratt makes excellent use of graphics to help illustrate the strategies employed by Shyamalan to prevent the first-time viewer anticipating the aforementioned twist . . . ultimately though, Buckland's collection does provide a thought-provoking study of what has become an important genre in contemporary cinema." (Scope Book Reviews, 1 February 2011)

"A timely and insightful guide to some of the more complex and labyrinthine currents in recent cinema, drawing on an admirable range of examples from around the globe. Geoff King, Professor of Film and TV Studies, Brunel University

Drawing upon the expertise of film scholars from around the world, Puzzle Films investigates a number of films that sport complex storytelling--from Memento, Old Boy, and Run Lola Run, to the Infernal Affairs trilogy and In the Mood for Love.

  • Unites American ‘independent’ cinema, the European and International Art film, and certain modes of avant-garde filmmaking on the basis of their shared storytelling complexity
  • Draws upon the expertise of film scholars from North America, Britain, China, Poland, Holland, Italy, Greece, New Zealand, and Australia

List of Contributors vii

Introduction: Puzzle Plots 1
Warren Buckland

1 The Mind-Game Film 13
Thomas Elsaesser

2 Making Sense of Lost Highway 42
Warren Buckland

3 “Twist Blindness”: The Role of Primacy, Priming, Schemas, and Reconstructive Memory in a First-Time Viewing of The Sixth Sense 62
Daniel Barratt

4 Narrative Comprehension Made Difficult: Film Form and Mnemonic Devices in Memento 87
Stefano Ghislotti

5 “Frustrated Time” Narration: The Screenplays of Charlie Kaufman 107
Chris Dzialo

6 Backbeat and Overlap: Time, Place, and Character Subjectivity in Run Lola Run 129
Michael Wedel

7 Infernal Affairs and the Ethics of Complex Narrative 151
Allan Cameron and Sean Cubitt

8 Happy Together? Generic Hybridity in 2046 and In the Mood for Love 167
Gary Bettinson

9 Revitalizing the Thriller Genre: Lou Ye’s Suzhou River and Purple Butterfly 187
Yunda Eddie Feng

10 The Pragmatic Poetics of Hong Sangsoo’s The Day a Pig Fell into a Well 203
Marshall Deutelbaum

11 Looking for Access in Narrative Complexity. The New and the Old in Oldboy 217
Eleftheria Thanouli

Index 233

Subject Areas: Society & culture: general [JF]
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