Experiments and Compromises: Mind-Game Films in Contemporary American Cinema
Abstract
The article focuses on the phenomenon of the so-called mind-game films – films emerging from the end of the 1990s, which are characterized by, among others, complicated narrative, ontologically uncertain worlds, mentally unstable characters that focus the story. The author embeds the phenomenon of mind-game films in the context of changes in the aesthetics and production of contemporary American cinema and answers the question, why is it most present in the American film industry. Although narrative experiments aimed at arousing cognitive discomfort in the audience were already visible in the modernist cinema, it is the contemporary American cinema that made them acceptable to the wider audience. Szczekała concentrates also on the aesthetic and ideological aspects of the phenomenon, and analyses the most recurrent themes and narrative tricks, and specific to the mind-game films form of “cognitive identification”.
Keywords:
mind-game films, narrative, discomfortReferences
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Authors
Barbara Szczekałakwartalnik.filmowy@ispan.pl
Jagiellonian University Poland
Doktorantka w Instytucie Sztuk Audiowizualnych Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego. Interesuje się przemianami narracji filmowej w kinie współczesnym oraz narratologią kognitywną. Współredaktorka czasopisma „Ekrany”, PR manager Międzynarodowego Festiwalu Filmowego Etiuda&Anima w Krakowie.
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