Complex Film Narratives

Abstract

From around the mid-1990s, mainstream Hollywood cinema has embraced more experimental approaches to its long-established and solidified "classical narrative" forms and rules. A fresh tendency has seemed to emerge through a handful of films injecting generic fictions and their traditional storytelling constraints with novel and, at the time, rather bold narrative creativitypractices that were thought to be exclusive to (post)modern literature and art cinema, and techniques that, in turn, also inspired new types of stories to be told. The success of pioneering early indie films, like Quentin Tarantino's 1994 Pulp Fiction, Alejandro Amenábar's 1997 Abre los ojos (Open Your Eyes), Tom Tykwer's 1998 Lola rennt (Run Lola Run), or Christopher Nolan's 2000 Memento, triggered a wave of films, marking out a clear trend that has remained an enduring current over the subsequent decades. Trailblazers, like Richard Kelly's 2001 Donnie Darko, earned cult status or were repositioned as trendsetters, such as David Lynch's 1997 Lost Highway, opening the gate to a mainstream phenomenon culminating in bigger (budget) productions