MEDIATORS OF SPATIO-TEMPORAL TRANSITIONS IN CINEMA: AN ATTEMPT AT CLASSIFICATION

Abstract

The cinema of the 21st century has reached such technical heights that it can show any world on the screen, no matter how incredible the chronotope turns out to be. The science fi ction genre, in demand at all times, is now supplemented with elements of mysticism, horror, detective story, drama, etc., and these plots are often built on all kinds of movements with the help of some kind of intermediary. This can be either a special time machine of various confi gurations designed for such movements (a car or other man-made device), or home artifacts and loci, whose transition possibilities are discovered by the characters by chance: a diary, a mirror, a clock, a window, plumbing (“Hot Tub Time Machine”, “The Butterfl y effect”, “Time lapse”, “Window to Paris”, “Save Pushkin”, “Samyy Novyy god!”), etc. The portal can be a natural object (a cave in the TV series “Dark”, a lake in “Black Hunters”), urban: a tunnel, an abandoned room (“Enter Nowhere”) or a completely exotic item that works only individually (“The Jacket”), or there may be familiar locations through which transitions to alternative realities are possible under certain conditions. Sometimes it’s not an object that becomes such a portal, but a person’s state: a dream (“Inception”, “Alibi”, “RRRrrrr!!!”) or death (“Boss Level”, “Russian Doll”, “Before I Fall”, “ARQ” ). In the fi rst case, the character fi nds himself either in a different continuum within the dream, or is transported only in time or only in space, waking up in someone else’s body in the name of good causes - preventing an explosion (“Source Code”), catching a serial killer (“The Dark Side of the Moon” ), etc. In the second case, the plot is usually cyclical, the viewer is waiting for the character to get out of this “Groundhog Day”.