Introduction

One dominant approach to complex narratives has been to focus upon how these ‘foreground the relationship between the temporality of the story and the order of its telling’ (Cameron 2008, 1; cf. Buckland 2009b; Feagin 1999; Kinder 2002). Thus, for many scholars the complexity of contemporary cinema consists in the complex telling of a more or less complex story. However, this chapter suggests that the ‘complexity’ of complex narratives is better understood in terms of how the films challenge prevalent conceptual tools and patterns of sense-making. In particular, this chapter addresses the cognitive conception of the fabula conceived as a mental representation. From this conception, the fabula is often perceived to be an intrinsic value of the narrative itself. Against this widespread presumption, I argue that the complexity of complex narratives is rather derived from the ability of these films to challenge established beliefs, conceptions, assumptions, and prevalent methodological frameworks. In this manner, complex narratives make it obvious that the complexity of a system cannot be determined by disengaging it from the observer.

This chapter explores how complex narratives, by shattering a series of binaries that have long informed Western rationality, can be seen in relation to an ongoing reconstruction of the notion of complexity currently undertaken in a series of scientific disciplines. In particular, I explore how cinematic complexity in this fashion induces a mode of thinking beyond the cinematic dichotomies of classical and modern(ist), linear and non-linear, cognitive film science and Deleuzian film-philosophy, cognition and affect, etc. In doing so, I combine a film-philosophical approach with the complexity theory of Edgar Morin to understand the interplay and interrelation of components that in the tradition of classical narratology are thought to be separate.