Character and Complexity in American Independent Cinema: 21 Grams and Passion Fish‪.‬

Since the early 1990s, films with complex narrative structures have been a mainstay of world cinema. Although such structures have been used in films of many eras and national contexts (e.g., The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1919), Citizen Kane (1941), Rashomon (1950)), in recent years we undoubtedly have been experiencing a period of sustained interest in inventive forms of visual storytelling. Pulp Fiction (1994) is often seen as the progenitor of the trend that includes not only films with rearranged chronologies (The Limey [1999], Memento [2000]) but also simultaneously occurring parallel stories (Go [1999], Time Code [2000]), stories of parallel universes (Sliding Doors [1998], Run Lola Run [1998]), and "network narratives" of large ensembles of characters (Magnolia [1999], Love Actually [2003]) (Bordwell, The Way Hollywood Tells It). Most of these have pre-Pulp Fiction antecedents. The time-scrambling films hark back to modernist cinema, literature, and drama. The forking-paths stories of parallel events recall Jim Jarmusch and Krzysztof Kieslowski. And the network narratives are descendents not only of classics such as Rules of the Game (1939) but also television dramas. In all instances, by offering something different from a plot unfolded in linear chronology, these films incorporate novel narrative forms that seem to achieve an intrinsic aesthetic appeal. This strategy is part of the larger phenomenon of the rise of a full-fledged alternative and parallel mode of production and reception in the U.S. alongside the Hollywood mainstream. When we think of complex narratives such as those mentioned above we tend not to have in mind studio blockbusters, though such films sometimes do invert or rearrange their chronologies (e.g., by beginning at the end and telling the story in flashbacks, as has also become common in network television series). The recent phenomenon of complex narratives is rooted firmly in the alternative sphere of cinema, the films screened at festivals and art houses and seen on boutique cable television outlets such as IFC. These typically are either imports from abroad like Hong Sang-Soo's The Virgin Stripped Bare By Her Bachelors (2000) or off-Hollywood domestic productions like Thirteen Conversations About One Thing (2001). Independent cinema, which has supplanted foreign art cinema as the most prominent feature film alternative to Hollywood, offers appeals that are distinct from those of mainstream cinema. One of these is a formal complexity, an aesthetic play that some think is more sophisticated or engaging than what one finds in mainstream fare (King, Levy, Newman). Complexity of storytelling in the past two decades of American film is a function in large part of the increasing prominence of the independent cinema movement.