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7Infernal Affairs and the Ethicsof Complex NarrativeAllan Cameron and Sean CubittThe opening images of Infernal Affairs (Andrew Lau Wai Keung Lau andAlan Mak Siu Fai, 2002) offer an oblique rendering of hell. Against a blackbackground, a series of Buddha figures skirt the edges of the frame, to bereplaced by the fierce brows and distorted maws of gargoyles. This is animage of descent, but as these nightmarish features surface through layersof darkness and smoke, the orientation of the movement becomes unclear.Is the camera still descending, or is it traversing the statues laterally? Thisinitial sense of disorientation captures much about the formal and thematicdirection the film will take. The film’s Chinese title, Mou gaan dou, andopening quotation (from the Nirvana Sutra, verse 19), refer to the lowestlevel of hell in Buddhist mythology, “Continuous Hell.” 1 Similarly, the restof the film will be oriented around a spatial and moral hierarchy of levels.Yet we also argue that this hierarchy is undermined by a countervailinginsistence on lateral orientation that is linked to the film’s complication ofethical questions. In relation to its complex network of duplicitous characters,simultaneous actions, and technologically mediated communications,Infernal Affairs challenges its viewers to orient themselves both cognitivelyand ethically.Released in 2002, Infernal Affairs is set in contemporary Hong Kong, fiveyears after reunification with China. The Special Administrative Region maintainsits distinctiveness, firstly in its use of Cantonese as opposed to thegovernmental language of the People’s Republic, Mandarin; and secondlyin the urbanity of its protagonists, whose knowledge of their city is integralto both their self-image and the plot. That the film’s initial invocationof Buddhism coexists with its insistence upon its contemporary urbancontext should not, however, be seen as contradictory. As David Morleyargues, “we have to begin to entertain the possibilities for a wide varietyof (not necessarily secular or Western) modernities, in different parts of