Impossible Puzzle Films

A Cognitive Approach to Contemporary Complex Cinema

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by Miklós Kiss and Steven Willemsen

Type: Studies
Subject: Technique > Scriptwriting
Keywords: scriptwriting, narrative process
Publishing date: 2016
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
Language: English

Relative size

Physical desc.

Hardcover • 240 pages
6 x 9 ¼ inches (15.5 x 23.5 cm)

ISBN

978-1-4744-0672-7

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Book Presentation:
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

About the authors:
Miklós Kiss is Assistant Professor in Film and Media Studies at the University of Groningen, the Netherlands. His research focuses on contemporary audiovisual media, intersecting the fields of narrative and cognitive film theories.
Steven Willemsen is a PhD-candidate and Junior Lecturer in Film Studies at the University of Groningen, the Netherlands. His research addresses the topic of story complexity from embodied-cognitive and narratological perspectives.

Press Reviews:
Impossible Puzzle Films is a dense, probing, truly enlightening study of a salient trend within world cinema. Kiss and Willemsen offer an enriching perspective on cinema’s cognitive and affective power, its capacity to beguile, bewilder, and delight.– Gary Bettinson, The Year's Work in Critical and Cultural Theory

Kiss and Willemsen’s book is an important step forward in the study of cinematic complexity. It offers a thorough analysis of complex storytelling techniques with a special focus on the "impossible puzzle films," reveals the cognitive effects and challenges they evoke and explores the reasons why viewers find them fascinating.'– Professor Marina Grishakova, Institute of Cultural Research and Arts, University of Tartu

See the publisher website: Edinburgh University Press

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