Introduction

This chapter examines two complex narratives: Tom Tykwer's ‘forkingpath’ narrative LOLA RENNT (RUN LOLA RUN 1998) and Alejandro González Iñárritu's ‘mosaic’ narrative 21 GRAMS (2003). Despite their differences in narrative form, national, historical and political context, audio design, acting style, and visual expression, much of the critical attention that has been granted these films has followed a similar line of reasoning. Both films have been perceived as representatives of a particular mode of complexity, which certain critics have claimed dominates contemporary narration. The idea is that despite their intricate narrative forms, complex narratives actually adhere to a classical, linear logic. This chapter aims to show how this view is rooted in the linear onto-epistemological conception of the cognitive-formalist fabula. In order to do so, a discussion will be undertaken with a number of analytical approaches to the two selected films, which in different manners exhibit prevalent modes of dealing with cinematic complexity. The aim of doing so is twofold: 1) to elucidate the distinguishable manner in which both films challenge typical analytical, narratological, and conceptual frameworks for understanding cinematic complexity, and 2) to formulate alternative approaches that avoid the reductionist and dichotomized principles according to which complex narratives have often been examined.

Although embodied cognition rarely employs the actual mathematical or physical theories that have been developed within the vast research field of dynamical system theory, chaos theory, non-linear dynamics, or the study of complex systems (henceforth ‘complexity theory’), this orientation makes use of concepts derived from these fields as ‘a highly intuitive set of metaphors for thinking about physically embodied agents’ (Pfeifer & Bongard 2007, 93).