Analysis Of The Mind Game Film

When analysing the narrative structure of a film in order to determine how it may serve to articulate a discourse in the relationship between reality and fantasy it can be extremely useful to consider the aspects of the narrative which may make it “complex.” “Complex” narratives often explore ontological issues and epistemology as key story themes, taking from the other title of this type of narrative the “mind-game” film. Whilst this name refers to how these films use their narrative in order to play with the viewer’s perceptions of the film they are watching, many of these mind game films take this idea further, also making the story of the narrative about the mind by considering how the ideas of fantasy and reality may be affected by how

The most important part of mind-game films is the fact that they encourage more interaction from the audience. In the past few decades the increase of content on television has caused the public to become more exposed to different types of narratives, and better at both understanding and predicting them. In many cases both film and television indirectly encourage the idea of the passive spectator through the use and continual reuse of easily identifiable tropes, simple narrative structure, and strict adherence to the unspoken rules of cinema which have developed from the days of the earliest movies. Mind game films do the opposite, encouraging the audience to think by creating narratives that are more complex. One of the more common ways they do this is by suspending ‘the common contract between the film and its viewers, which is that films do not “lie” to the spectator, but are truthful and self-consistent within the premises of their diegetic worlds.’ They are willing to suspend

We see an unknown man in what appears to be 1930’s Los Angeles. He leaves a letter for Hall with a barman, before returning home to his wife. The same man (Fuller) awakens in (for the time) modern day Los Angeles, revealing the previous world to be a simulation, and attempts to contact Hall in the real world, but is murdered by an unknown person before he can. As well as an example of good visual storytelling in order to allow the audience to see events which will be described in dialogue later to our protagonist, consequently meaning that for the most part we do not learn more than he knows, it also adds further to the discourse in various ways. There is no indication given that the opening setting is a simulation, so the audience begins the film with no reason to believe that this is not the “real” world. This is intended to create shock when the man goes to sleep, suddenly wakening in the “real” world. The contrast between the two becomes more apparent moving directly from one scene to the other with the aid of digital editing. Filters have been placed over the scenes of the 1930’s simulation that slightly mute the colours. As this is a common convention of film’s set in an earlier time period this would not be particularly jarring, or even overly noticeable, to the audience, until the move to the 1990’s. This both enforces the idea that this is now the “real” world, the audience