Endlessness: New Ending Patterns in Postmodern Cinema with a Look at Mulholland Drive

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

1 Associate Professor, Department of Performing Arts, University of Tehran

2 Associate Professor (Retired), Department of Performing Arts, University of Tehran

3 MFA in Cinema, Department of Performing Arts, University of Tehran

10.30480/dam.2022.4440.1751

Abstract

Postmodernism, influenced by the socio-cultural atmosphere of the era, has affected films and in particular, the narratives have seen some radical transformations. The ending sequences have also evolved to have the previous patterns and new ones. In this article, we will first examine the bearings and importance of the final sequences and the ending of the films in different periods of the history of cinema and how films end regardless of their genre, style, and period in which they have been made. Therefore, we look at how the postmodern discourse penetrated the world of postmodern cinema and merged it with different styles of the previous eras. Subsequently, along with the intellectual content of the postmodern era, we now can see an aesthetic form that affects the laying out of the ending sequence and denouement, generally resulting in the form of mixture of the codes of the previous periods and a new particular one. In this regard, by examining "Mulholland Drive", which is considered to be one of the early examples of postmodern films with unique endless endings, we see that sometimes postmodern films do not retain any predetermined pattern for their closure. This lack of modeling that brings us to unchartered territories shows that in an endless (not just open endings but ones with more questions to solve) way, the audiences are left to ponder and question the whole film. Fredric Jameson refers to this pattern as endlessness and considers it be one of the characteristics of postmodern cinema because not only is it contradictory, but also this contradiction can be seen as a problem arising from the totality of postmodern human life as a whole, in which human beings experience a complex life in the last period of capitalism and into a postmodern world depicted in the films. According to Jameson's theory, just as the political and social structure of life in the postmodern period is invisible, the endings of postmodern films are also not vivid and audiences are unable to find any endings. We have applied this theory to the film "Mulholland Drive" and shown that its endlessness coincides with the film’s structure and narrative.

Keywords

Volume 13, Issue 29
September 2022
Pages 87-109

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