Puzzle Films Research Articles

Understanding the Spatial Narratives of Puzzle Films Using Cognitive Maps

Spatial narratives are becoming increasingly significant in contextualizing geographical phenomena. Whereas many studies focus on spatial narratives of real spaces projected from the Earth’s surface, this article examines the imaginary spaces in the narrative of Hollywood puzzle films, arguing that cognitive maps are more effective in understanding and navigating these spaces. Through an analysis of well-known puzzle films, the article demonstrates how cognitive maps can encode imaginary spaces, draw the audience’s attention to key landmarks, and guide both the filmmaker and the audience through the film’s narrative. Beyond films, this study underscores the potential of cognitive maps in decoding complex space–time relationships in real-world context. By bridging the gap between cinematic imagination and geographical exploration, this article aims not only to inspire filmmakers but also to encourage geographers, cartographers, and GIScientists to look beyond their own fields and draw inspiration from other areas, such as cinematography, to envision a terra incognita that extends beyond the real world.

Deceptive Retrospective Narrative Strategy and Synchronistic Prerequisite: Case Study on The Design of Impossible Puzzles

The deceptive clues in the impossible puzzle film confirm the viewer’s internal expectations and allow retrospective attributing. In the film, a transcendental object negates an internal expectation, causing a retrospective blockage. Retrospectivity does not stop there; the transcendental object reinterpreting deceptive clues in the associative area leads to repeated attribution. This article consists of three parts. First, it discusses impossible puzzle films in the context of complex narrative classification. The following section introduces the Jungian concept of synchronicity and illustrates how it works. The article concludes with a case study of Long Day’s Journey into Night (2018), which contains more complicated puzzles and explains how mind-game narrative techniques create deceptive clues and induce deceptive retrospective attribution.

On the Margin of ”Satantango”. Some Remarks on Slow Cinema

Athough Satantango by Bela Tarr is usually regarded as a perfect representative of slow cinema and certainly deserves this reputation, it is worth remembering that it shares some features with other currents of modern cinema. Its networkish structure and unreliable narration place it close to puzzle films; its close affinity with the Krasznahorkai novel, on which it is based, makes it a form of impure – that is – hybrid cinema; due to an accumulation of evil deeds, tragic and sensational events, it resembles films of action. But, first of all, it is a paramount example of slow cinema, and as such it enables one to grasp the essential features of this genre. According to certain views, often built on the foundation of Andre Bazin theory, slow cinema imitates natural human perception and therefore is inherently realistic. This is not true, though. Instead of a reality effect, slow cinema produces rather a verfremdung effect, which in turn enhances the big potential of slow cinema in inducing transcendental or religious states in a viewer’s mind. Satantango explores this potential, drawing on the religious connotations of Krasznahorkai novel.

Effect of Adding Emotion Recognition to Film Teaching—Impact of Emotion Feedback on Learning through Puzzle Films

In this study, the scientific puzzle film, “Story of the Comet”, is taken as a case to implement scientific teaching to guide students to find correct answers, through which it can train their learning and judging abilities. The students in the experimental group received the scientific teaching guiding system of the puzzle film “Story of the Comet” with a facial emotion recognition system to recognize the emotional reaction of the subjects at the moment. According to their facial expressions of “disgust”, “sadness”, or “joy” appearing in the moment, the system presented differently captioned positive encouragement cards particularly designed for four different levels, for when the subjects answered the questions incorrectly at different levels and their emotions were detected at the same time. Furthermore, the positive encouragement cards encouraged the subjects to complete the puzzle film learning process. The subjects were students in the higher grades of Grade 5 and Grade 6 in elementary school. A total of 130 students participated in this experiment and were randomly divided into two groups. Both the control group (i.e., the group without emotion recognition) and the experiment group (i.e., the group with emotion recognition) received a before-watching test of learning effectiveness. After implementing the scientific teaching of the puzzle film “Story of the Comet”, both the control group and the experimental group also received an after-watching test of learning effectiveness. Finally, the subjects filled out a “learning satisfaction” questionnaire, “system availability” questionnaire, and “system satisfaction” questionnaire. The analysis of the results of the two groups’ tests and questionnaires: a comparative analysis of learning effectiveness indicates that there is a statistically significant difference between the choice answers of the two groups after the interactive teaching; for the experimental group, the average correct answers in the after-watching test was 5.86, which is 2.48 more than the before-watching test; that of the control group was 4.74, which is 1.47 more than the before -watching test. For comparative analysis of questionnaires for “learning satisfaction” and “system satisfaction”, the statistical data analysis indicates that the experimental group was more satisfied than the control group.

Adapting Complex Time: Story of Your Life (1998) and Arrival (2016)

In both literature and film, we’re faced with complex characters, complex plots, complex themes, complexity in narration and, occasionally, complexity in narrative structure, all of which have been long present in fictional works and all of which have been addressed extensively by scholars (we’ve witnessed a resurgence of these terms in academic circles in recent years following the rise of the puzzle film in the 1990s).But what can be inferred when we consider narrative complexity in terms of adaptation?For this study, I consider complexity in relation to nonlinear storytelling and apply stylistic methods of analysis to the blockbuster film Arrival (2016) and its source text - Ted Chiang’s short story, Story of Your Life (1998). The aim of this paper is to examine narrative complexity in adaptation and address questions surrounding what is adapted in such cases, how it is adapted, and the effects both versions of such a text can produce.The argument that I advance is based on the premise that by breaking down the text (moving image and printed text) into its narrative components, we can develop a better understanding of how complex narratives such as this operate across platforms. My analysis focuses on the nonlinear narration, narrative focalisation and the presentation of coinciding narrative frames that are present in the source text and its film adaptation.

Residue: The privilege of spatiality in the puzzle film

Typical discourses around the puzzle film – a genre that typically eschews classic storytelling for more complex narrative techniques, such as entangled secondary/tertiary plotlines, and characters with mental or psychological instability – often privilege the manipulation of the film’s temporality and narratology. However, in this article, I perform a close textual analysis of the mise en scène of Inception by Christopher and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004) by Michel Gondry to demonstrate how these puzzle films privilege spatiality over time and plot to depict cognitive processes associated with mental and psychological instability, thereby bringing attention to an underrepresented attribute of the genre. I focus on the influence of surrealism on mise en scène, as surrealist art and cinema manipulate space to explore the psyche. I also draw on these films’ production history to show how the filmmakers, production crew and actors understood approaches to space as a cognitive process.

Anime, otaku y cintas de vídeo: el formato OVA como catalizador de la complejidad narrativa en la animación japonesa contemporánea

En este artículo exploramos la condición de las OVA (las ediciones domésticas de anime) como formato bisagra entre la madurez narrativa del anime en los setenta y la narración compleja de los noventa en adelante. La metodología empleada parte del análisis narratológico inspirado por la poética histórica de los modos de narración realizada por David Bordwell. Así, atendiendo a las categorías de la cognoscibilidad, de la autoconsciencia y de la comunicabilidad, constatamos en los resultados y en las conclusiones que la presunta simplicidad narrativa atribuida al anime no es tal, y que las OVA analizadas —Twilight Q: Meikyū Bukken Fairu Go San Hachi (Mamoru Oshii, 1987), Gunbuster (H. Anno, 1988-89) y Otaku no Video (T. Mori, 1991)— se alzan como hitos clave para el asentamiento de otro tipo de narración en la industria de la animación japonesa contemporánea, uno que lejos de ser formulaico, tiene correspondencia con la estimulante experimentación narrativa internacional de las llamadas puzzle films.

Making Sense of Complex Narration in Perfect Blue

Although identified as a feature of the film by both critics and researchers, the narrative complexity of Perfect Blue (Satoshi Kon, Madhouse, 1997) has been ambiguously defined. In this article, the authors examine the complex narration in Kon’s first feature film, equivocal and obscure in its more confusing points, through a narratological analysis of the film’s most ambiguous scenes. Using cognitive film theory as introduced by David Bordwell and Edward Branigan, they link its approach in terms of the modulation of information flow throughout the film – high knowledgeability, high self-consciousness and (occasionally) low communicativeness – with the conventions of the slasher genre. Their analysis of the more perplexing scenes in Perfect Blue is reinforced by monitoring the veiled changes of focalization between the film’s three focalizers: Mima, Uchida (aka Me-Mania) and Rumi. In order to do this, they explore how the narration – in the tradition of contemporary puzzle films – makes use of judgements, preconceptions and cognitive illusions in the spectators’ activity to conceal Rumi’s involvement in the persecution of Mima and the murders committed. In the conclusion, they associate the film’s complex narration with its critical commentary on the representation of Japanese pop idols (and former idols) and the state of audiovisual entertainment in Japan.

Keeping Track of Time: The Role of Spatial and Embodied Cognition in the Comprehension of Nonlinear Storyworlds

a B s t r a c t: What allows an audience to make sense of stories with complex nonlinear time structures that are radically different from everyday experience? To address this question, we distinguish between two types of narrative nonlinearity: nonlinear storytelling (a non-chronological presentation of events in the narration) and nonlinear storyworlds (nonlinearity as a feature of the narrated world, for instance by way of time-travel or temporal loops). With most scholarly attention focusing on the former, here we focus on the latter, as the question of what allows audiences to make sense of strange and impossible storyworld temporalities has remained somewhat overlooked. Drawing on the available research on text comprehension, we first discuss how both strategies of nonlinearity affect narrative comprehension differently. We then ask what cognitive abilities allow spectators to engage with nonlinear storyworlds. Drawing on insights from conceptual metaphor theory and mental timeline theory, we propose that the comprehension of nonlinear storyworlds is facilitated by the cognitive ability to mentally represent time in terms of space. By metaphorically blending spatial and embodied concepts into narrative timelines, strategies of spatial mental representation allow spectators to conceive and comprehend various forms of phenomenologically non-experienceable time structures—a hypothesis we seek to demonstrate through several cases of nonlinear storyworlds from contemporary complex cinema. k e y W o r D s: Narrative complexity, nonlinearity, puzzle films, conceptual metaphors, mental timeline

Showing the Complexity of the Simple – The Art-puzzle of Hong Sang-soo

Renowned South Korean film director, Hong Sang-soo, has shown deep interest in complex (or some might say: confusing) storytelling throughout his entire career. Since modernist art cinema has an affinity with unconventional narrative structures, it is not surprising that an auteur like Hong is attracted to complexity. What is interesting here is that Hong’s (often black and white) films are a kind of analogue answer to the challenges of digital culture, a modernist art cinema version of puzzle films and database narratives. The article analyses the very Hongian strategy of producing auteurist puzzle films by creating confusion on a perceptive and narrative level.
 Firstly, the article summarises how Hong’s unique film making practice not only provides significant (economic, artistic) independence and freedom to the author, but at the same time proves to be a structure that delivers high complexity at a low production cost. Secondly, the article analyses the puzzling techniques used by Hong that work on a perceptual level, and often turn his films into high level memory tests; and how these structures play a part in the “perceptual reeducation” of viewers while also serving as commentaries on cinematic representation. And finally, the article concludes with an analysis of the narrative techniques used by Hong to tell extremely simple stories about the eternal topic of “men want women” in a complex, confusing and compelling way.

From Rivers to Confetti: Reconfigurations of Time through New Media Narratives

From Rivers to Confetti: Reconfigurations of Time through New Media Narratives

Last Year at Mulholland Drive: Ambiguous Framings and Framing Ambiguities

AbstractThis article proposes a cognitive-narratological perspective on David Lynch’sMulholland Drive(2001) and the numerous contrasting interpretations that this film has generated. Rather than offering an(other) interpretation of the film, we aim to investigate some of the reasons why Lynch’s highly complex narrative has gained a cult – if not classic – status in recent film history. To explain the striking variety of (often conflicting) interpretations and responses that the film has evoked, we analyse its complex narrative in terms of its cognitive effects. Our hypothesis is that part ofMulholland Drive’s attractiveness arises from a cognitive oscillation that the film allows between profoundly differing, but potentially equally valid interpretive framings of its enigmatic story: as a perplexing but enticing puzzle, sustained by (post-)classical cues in its narration, and as an art-cinematic experience that builds on elements from experimental, surrealist, or other film- and art-historical traditions. The urge to narrativizeMulholland Drive, we argue, is driven by a distinct cognitive hesitation between these conflicting arrays of meaning making. As such, the film has been trailblazing with regards to contemporary cinema, setting stage for the current trend of what critics and scholars have called complex cinema or puzzle films.

Screening Expectation

Screen Bodies 3.2 engages with a wide variety of topics—fat studies, contemporary queer cinema, (pre)posterity, puzzle films, grief and truth in filmmaking, feminist materialism, digitized bodies, food and horror, and Maghrebi cinema. As well, the selection of articles in this issue represents studies of several media—tv programs, films, publicity stills, and photographs—from a number of locations around the globe—North America, Europe, Africa, and Asia. What holds this general issue together, though, is a concern over expectation, assumption, and supposition: what we suppose screens and bodies do and what we suppose they do not do. As usual, with this journal, the focus of this consideration is doublehanded: screen as projection and screen as prohibition. The articles below explore the duality of screens and our responses to them. They engage screening expectation as showing, exposing, divulging, and, at the same time, as testing, partitioning, and withholding. To screen expectation is to reveal and conceal it, and, as these articles argue—each in their own way—this process is what we all engage in when we engage with screening.

When the Future Is Hard to Recall

Puzzle films like Denis Villeneuve’s Arrival (2016) present challenges not only for viewers, but also for scientists seeking to understand brain functions such as memory formation, because these films deliberately scramble the temporal and spatial contexts that viewers normally rely on to create mental narratives and to form episodic memories. The strategic shuffling of multiple plotlines and chronologies in Arrival ultimately builds to an illusion of clairvoyance in the viewer, the imaged sensation of being able to see into the future, alongside the protagonist, Louise Banks. In order to create this “special effect” within viewers’ memories—a false memory of the narrative’s future—Villeneuve seeds the film with key pieces of information that viewers must hold in memory before ultimately solving the puzzle at the end and enjoying a special form of catharsis in the process.

Unscrambling the narrative chronology of Hong Sangsoo’s Hill of Freedom

Abstract Jayuui Eondeok (Hill of Freedom) (2014), Hong Sangsoo’s complex puzzle film with a purpose, presents a typically Hongian story in a scrambled order. In foregrounding the challenge of rearranging its fifteen jumbled scenes into their proper chronological order, the film invites viewers to reflect self-consciously on the general process of reading with a narrative schema in mind as they solve the puzzle: forming inferences and suppositions about the order of scenes and looking for clear-cut indications of causal and temporal connections between them. Further complicating the challenge of constructing hypotheses about the correct order of the scenes is the fact that one scene is missing. Where it fits into the story’s chronology, and whether its absence hampers establishing the proper order, adds to the viewer’s puzzlement. While viewers experience Hill of Freedom in an order that scrambles past, present and future, the correct chronology can be established by following the changing deictic centre, which enables viewers to make inferences about the correct order of the events that Mori describes.

Impossible Puzzle Films, or the Attraction of Sense-Making

Impossible Puzzle Films, or the Attraction of Sense-Making

Devil-nets of clues: True Detective and the search for meaning

Abstract This article examines the first season of the hit television series True Detective (2014) with respect to the claim that it deliberately adopted a form fitting the new world of digital television. The article argues that this embrace is less than complete: the show seeks an immersive, novelistic experience rather than something entirely new. It further argues that this immersive experience is supported by the series’ richly detailed background and by its invocation of various aspects of weird fiction. The article also discusses some of the institutional factors shaping the series: the availability of the puzzle film genre as an interpretive framework, the existence of an audience interested in assuming the attitude of what Jason Mittell has called the forensic fan, and the choice of a traditional, one-episode-per-week release schedule. Finally, the article discusses the show’s ending and the disappointed reactions of critics and fans, arguing that the idea that the show intended to exploit digitization by adopting a more game-like approach, offering clues that could only be found using digital tools, is undercut by the many loose ends left unresolved by the finale. The article concludes that the density and detail of the series’ background, inviting viewers to explore, should be regarded not as providing pieces of a puzzle to be solved, but as an opportunity to deepen viewer engagement.

Effects of the dominant in Secret Window

This paper seeks to identify and examine ‘problematic’ aesthetic strategies in David Koepp's Secret Window (2004). Arguing that the film fits into a specific ‘puzzle film’ category favouring self‐deceiving protagonists and surprise twists, the paper seeks to account for the negative critical reaction accrued by the film's denouement. Most centrally, I invoke the Russian Formalist's concept of the ‘dominant’ in order to suggest how Secret Window subordinates textual elements to the film's narrative revelation. It is this prioritising of the main plot twist that accounts for many of the film's dramaturgically contentious tactics. The paper demonstrates the means by which Secret Window cuts against the grain of Hollywood storytelling norms; it suggests that the film manipulates character engagement in a way that exceeds the puzzle film's traditional reshuffling of sympathies; and it indicates how the film deploys generic convention and allusion to engender a highly self‐conscious and repressive narration. These arguments aim to show that the film displays bold and sophisticated aesthetic strategies. More broadly, the paper argues that by analysing problematic examples of a film genre, we can usefully disclose the aesthetic principles that underpin the genre's more successful films.

Complex narratives

This paper brings together narratology, game theory, and complexity theory to untangle the intricate nature of complex narratives in contemporary cinema. It interrogates the different terms – forking‐path narratives, mind‐game films, modular narratives, multiple‐draft films, database narratives, puzzle films, subjective stories, and network narratives – used in current film theory to discuss complex narratives.