Buckland-Warren-Puzzle-Films-Complex-Storytelling-Contemporary-Cinema

134 Michael Wedelnarratives tend to treat what we learn about in one world as a backgroundcondition for what is shown later in another” (Bordwell 2002, p. 98). ForBordwell, the clearest instance for forking paths “contaminating” each othercomes from Run Lola Run, where Lola from one episode to the next learnsto control her immense screaming power, until in the third episode she“calculatedly emits another scream, and this one not only breaks glass butguides the ball into the winning slot” after she had bet on a spin of a roulettewheel in the casino. Bordwell concludes: “It’s as if she has learned to tamewhat was initially a sheer expression of desperation, turning it to her purposes”(Bordwell 2002, p. 99).The seventh, and final, key convention identified by Bordwell is summarizedas: “All paths are not equal; the last one taken, or completed, isthe least hypothetical one” (Bordwell 2002, p. 100). Apart from whatBordwell refers to as folk-psychology’s “recency effect” which always tendsto privilege “the final future we see,” this convention is built upon the previousone insofar as the last future here appears as a consequence of theother two.The contention that “the last future we encounter is privileged byits absorption of the lessons learned in an earlier one” leads Bordwell tosuggest that these “forking-path” plots might be better described as“multiple-draft narratives, with the last version presenting itself as thefullest, most satisfying revision” (Bordwell 2002, p. 102).Bordwell notes that he has to sidestep a number of important differencesamong his selection of films, for the sake of arriving at a coherent setof generic conventions. These dissimilarities include, as he admits, majordifferences between the individual films’ rhythms and soundscapes, whichwould set Run Lola Run’s “techno rush” miles apart from, for example, the“sober, philosophical pacing of Blind chance” (Bordwell 2002, p. 102).There are a number of objections or, rather, refinements, to be made toBordwell’s application of his set of conventions to a film like Run Lola Run:for one, I would argue that the temporal structure of the film’s individualepisodes or trajectories is, in fact, not circular at all, if one thinks of themany more instances where we encounter moments of overlap and recognitionacross the episodes. Lola not only learns how to manipulate and useher screaming to good ends, but she also uses her knowledge on howto unlock a gun, a procedure Manni taught her in the first episode andwhose intuitive knowledge enables her to rob the bank in the second. Themoment she remembers how to use the mechanism constitutes a momentof recognition which is strongly emphasized in the film by an extended