Impossible Puzzle Films: A Cognitive Approach to Contemporary Complex Cinema

Miklós Kiss; Steven Willemsen

Published by Edinburgh University Press 2016

Impossible Puzzle Films

A Cognitive Approach to Contemporary Complex Cinema

Miklós Kiss and Steven Willemsen

https://doi.org/10.1515/9781474406734

Overview
Contents

About this book

Using a cognitive film studies framework, this book explores how our minds engage with complex storytelling

Narrative complexity is a trend in contemporary cinema. Since the late 1990s there has been a palpable increase in complex storytelling in movies. But how and why do complex movies create perplexity and confusion? How do we engage with these challenges? And what makes complex stories so attractive? By blending film studies, narrative theory and cognitive sciences, Kiss and Willemsen look into the relation between complex storytelling and the mind. Analysing the effects that different complex narratives have on viewers, the book addresses how films like Donnie Darko, Mulholland Drive or Primer strategically create complexity and confusion, and, by using the specific category of the ‘impossible puzzle film’, it examines movies that use baffling paradoxes, impossible loops, and unresolved ambiguities in their stories and storytelling. By looking at how these films play on our mind’s blind spots, this innovative book explains their viewing effects in terms of the mental state of cognitive dissonance that they evoke.

Key Features

Analyses the effects of complex narratives on viewers, including the psychological experience of puzzlement and perplexity
Explores impossible puzzle films as a specific set of highly complex popular films
Introduces cognitive dissonance as a key feature of these films
Brings together literary theory, cognitive narratology and film studies

Read the introduction and first chapter for free on our website (pdf)

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Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	v
Acknowledgements Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Introduction Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
I.1 In this book Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	3
Chapter 1 Contemporary Complex Cinema Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	8
1.1 Complex conditions: the resurgence of narrative complexity Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	10
1.2 Complex cinema as brain-candy for the empowered viewer Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	16
1.3 Narrative taxonomies: simple, complex, puzzle plots Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	18
Chapter 2 Cognitive Approach to Contemporary Complex Cinema Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	24
2.1 Why an (embodied-)cognitive approach? Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	28
2.2 Various forms of complexity and their effects on sense-making Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	37
2.3 A cognitive approach to classifying complexity Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	51
Chapter 3 Narrative Complexity and Dissonant Cognitions Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	65
3.1 The concept of cognitive dissonance Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	66
3.2 Cognitions in dissonance: from social psychology to narrative engagement Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	68
3.3 Types of dissonance in narrative comprehension Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	71
3.4 Cognitive access to impossible storyworlds: immersed and reflected operations Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	86
3.5 ‘Impossibilities’ and embodied cognition Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	91
Chapter 4 Taming Dissonance: Cognitive Operations and Interpretive Strategies Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	104
4.1 Cognitive dissonance versus narrative coherence Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	107
4.2 Reducing dissonance: interpretation and naturalisation Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	110
4.3 Coping with dissonance: frame-switches and poetic and aesthetic readings Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	127
4.4 Frame-switching as hermeneutic play in impossible puzzle films Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	130
Chapter 5 Impossible Puzzle Films: Between Art Cinema and (Post-)Classical Narration Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	140
5.2 Impossible puzzle films and (post-)classical narration Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	163
Chapter 6 Wallowing in Dissonance: The Attractiveness of Impossible Puzzles Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	183
6.1 Hermeneutic play and interpretive multiplicity Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	185
6.2 Orientation, navigation, mapping Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	189
6.3 Game logic and the fascination in failure Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	195
6.4 Effort justification Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	197
6.5 Diegetisation of decoupling Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	198
6.6 Fascination in infinity Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	200
6.7 Destabilised ontological certainty Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	203
6.8. Eudaimonic motivations and intrinsic needs Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	205
References Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	208
Filmography Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	221
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	224

(Deutsch)

Language: English
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
Audience: College/higher education;
Pages
- Main content: 240
Illustrations
- Other: 30 B/W illustrations
Keywords: Film, Media & Cultural Studies

eBook

Published: December 9, 2016
ISBN: 9781474406734