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Infernal Affairs and the Ethics of Complex Narrative 163This sense of isolation is characterized by, for example, the scenedescribed earlier in which Ming’s identity is revealed to Yan. Here, the revelationplays out through a scenario of mutual exclusion, in which first Yanand then Ming communicate indirectly, in the other’s absence, via the cluesin Ming’s office. 3 It is further encapsulated in the moment on the rooftopwhen Ming, glimpsing Yan reflected in the window of a skyscraper, spinsaround to find only empty space, as if the reflection had been his own afterall. Once again, one protagonist appears as a virtual reflection of the other.To the extent that ethics concerns a personal commitment to the other, inwhich alone one’s own right to exist is confirmed (Levinas 1989), alldrama that is based on the face-to-face meeting of characters depends uponthat irruption of the Other to produce one’s being. In Infernal Affairs, bycontrast, the mutual otherness of the two main protagonists fails to takeshape, in the absence of any interaction that might confront each with theother. When finally our protagonists meet in an unmediated way, other thanthrough inference and clues, the initial sense each has that the other canconfirm them in their reality is diffused and disappointed by the continuingsubterfuges. In this sense, both characters are denied the kind of truthto themselves that can only derive from their truth to the other, from thecapacity each has to draw out the truth of the other from their initiallyunknowable physiognomies. It is a question for narrative film of thestatus of truth.The question raised by Infernal Affairs concerns specifically the relationsbetween truth and fiction or, rather, between the loss of truth experiencedby both protagonists, and the sense that any audience will have that theyare watching a fiction. The moral argument of the film becomes apparentin the failure of either Yan or Ming to grasp the complexities of their condition– that only in communication between them can an ethical relationbe secured. Ming is prepared to ask for that recognition, but from a positionin which he has already forfeited the trust on which interpersonal ethicscan alone be founded. Yan in response refuses the invitation, calling on amorally superior, logically precedent, and socially binding concept of Lawin which, however, neither can believe. As a result, it is the viewer whomust take responsibility for the truth, while the characters blunder towardthe dénouement in a thickening fog of deception.The question then concerns truth’s displacement from either a protagonistor an authorial voice toward a spectator who is, finally, just that –one who watches but is unable to act. What orders of truth can we expect,and on whom does responsibility for them devolve? If responsibility is as