Cinema of Disorientation

Inviting Confusions

Häftad, Engelska, 2022

AvDominic Lash,n/a) Lash, Dominic (Film scholar

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Precisely, perhaps, because they are so immediately absorbing, narrative films can also be profoundly confusing and disorienting. This fascinating book neither proposes foolproof methods for avoiding confusion; nor does it suggest that disorientation is always a virtue. Instead it argues that the best way to come to terms with our confusion is to look closely at exactly what is confusing us, and why. At the heart of the book are original close readings of four important recent films: David Lynch's INLAND EMPIRE (2006), Leos Carax's Holy Motors (2012), Pedro Costa's Colossal Youth (2006) and Jean-Luc Godard's Goodbye to Language (2014). Clearly written but critically and theoretically bold, The Cinema of Disorientation: Inviting Confusions explores both how we get (or fail to get) our bearings with respect to a film, and what we might discover by (and while) doing so.

Produktinformation

Utgivningsdatum2022-05-30
Mått156 x 234 x 15 mm
Vikt324 g
FormatHäftad
SpråkEngelska
Antal sidor208
FörlagEdinburgh University Press
ISBN9781474462785

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List of figuresAcknowledgementsIntroductionProspectusPart One: Confusion as Fusion: metalepsis, completeness, and coherence1. Metalepsis in film and its implications2. Genres within genres within genres: nested narrative and metalepsis3. "Disappeared where it's real hard to disappear": three ways of getting lost in INLAND EMPIRE4. Achieving coherence: diegesis and death in Holy MotorsPart Two: Disorientating Figures and Figures of Disorientation5. Figuring (out) films: figuration in narrative cinema 6. Distinguishing the indistinguishable: figures of imperceptibility and impossibility in Lost Highway and Caché7. Homes for displaced figures: Pedro Costa's Colossal Youth8. Sink or swim: immersing ourselves in Jean-Luc Godard's Adieu au langageConclusion: Method-free orientationAppendix: Colossal Youth scene breakdownBibliographyFilmographyNotes Index

Dominic Lash’s book powerfully demonstrates the importance of an aesthetics of confusion in film analysis, importing many of the tactics and the crucial delicate distinctions that William Empson brought to the study of the types of disorientation we encounter in literature. One of the most fruitful implications of this elegantly written text, which Lash continually wrestles with, is that when a filmmaker cannot make a narrative cohesive or fully coherent — beset by the confusions he or she initially feels hopeful of controlling or mastering — the film may benefit from the fact that no sufficient solution to the "confusion" impasse has been found. A persisting sense of lostness can have a value in narrative equal to that achieved by a resolving order. Whether Lash is talking about Marion’s death tear in Psycho or the shifting sense of Diane Selwyn’s crying over the fantasy return of Camilla in Mulholland Dr., he manages to take us through the range of interpretive possibilities and associations with wondrous care. His lengthy readings of Lynch’s INLAND EMPIRE, Leos Carax’s Holy Motors, and Michael Haneke’s Caché are as illuminating as any that I’ve encountered.