SCSMI2017 Helsinki

This presentation is a case study driven extension of our book Impossible Puzzle Films: A Cognitive Approach to Contemporary Complex Cinema (Edinburgh UP 2017). 

In the book, we conceptualized the cognitive effects and interpretive responses that characterize the viewing experiences of confusingly complex narrative puzzles. 

In this talk, we test our theoretical ideas by looking at the case of David Lynch’s 2001 Mulholland Drive. Reviewing responses to the film’s narrative complexity, our hypothesis is that part of Mulholland Drive’s persistent appeal arises from a possible cognitive oscillation that the film allows between profoundly differing, but potentially equally valid interpretive ‘framings’.