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

“Twist Blindness” 73...SOUTH PHILADELPHIA” (Figure 3.5), and presents the viewer witha clear view of Malcolm – apparently alive and well – sitting on a benchopposite Cole’s house (Figure 3.6). This view is inter-cut with a seriesof point-of-view shots from Malcolm’s optical perspective: firstly ofMalcolm’s handwritten notes regarding Cole’s case history, and secondlyof Cole exiting the front door (Figure 3.7).This transitional sequence (scenes 1 to 2) severely reduces our chancesof foreseeing the film’s narrative twist from the very outset. To useBordwell’s (1985, p. 55) terms, the gap in the narrative is not “flaunted”;rather, it is “suppressed” by a number of interrelated factors. First, we haveto contend with the “emotional spill over” from our response to thegun-shot; given that emotional arousal decays slowly and soaks ups ourlimited processing resources, it reduces our ability to form hypotheses,especially regarding the long-term implications of the shooting. Second,we are not given a sufficient amount of time to recover from our emotionalresponses and form such hypotheses: for example, within only 27seconds of the gunshot, we are presented with inter-titles and a clear viewof Malcolm. Third, the film immediately presents us with an additionalinformational load to process: for instance, the reading of the inter-titleseffectively serves as a distracting task. Fourth, when forming impressionsof people and situations, primacy predominates; our first impression ofMalcolm is that he is alive and well. Fifth, considering that human cognitiontends to be conservative, the most obvious interpretation of events isthat time has passed and that Malcolm has made a full recovery. Sixth, thenarrative immediately encourages us to anticipate future events (the caseof child patient Cole Sear) rather than to dwell on the event which has justoccurred.In summary, our emotional response to the shooting, the short timegapbetween the shooting and the next shot of Malcolm, the informationalload, and the nature of our first impression of Malcolm severely reducethe likelihood that we will seriously entertain the proposition that“Malcolm might be dead.” This, in turn, reduces the likelihood that sucha proposition will be committed to our long-term memory. To put thepoint another way, even if we did briefly entertain the proposition that“Malcolm might be dead,” the emotional spill over from the introductoryscene and the information load presented by the subsequent sequence wouldinhibit the cognitive rehearsal of this proposition; such rehearsal would berequired for the successful transfer of the proposition from short-term (orworking) memory to long-term memory.