According to Steven Shaviro (2016), who makes this argument in his essay Post-Continuity: An Introduction, the way of representing the world in cinema has changed from the continuity situation, in which classical continuity rules have been mostly followed to build a narrative, to the “post-continuity” situation, in which continuity “has ceased to be as important as it used to be.” A barrage of “high-voltage scenes” using “a wide swath of sensationalistic technique that tears the old classical filmmaking style to bits” are used to convey chaotic feelings in “chaotic cinema” (Matthias Stork, 2012) where space and time clarity are not the primary concerns, but this does not mean that the old classical rules are abandoned and replaced by “chaotic cinematography”.

It is more the other way around: “In post-continuity films, unlike classical ones, continuity rules are used opportunistically and occasionally, rather than structurally and pervasively.” (Shaviro, 2016, pp. 57) Therefore, despite the fact that Stork’s video essay provides with us a fresh and thought-provoking dimension to reconsider and examine the transformation in aesthetic style occurring in nowadays filmmaking, I find myself leaning more toward Steven Shaviro’s (2016) assessment that “it is inadequate simply to say that the new action films are merely vapid and sensationalist.” (pp. 53) That is to say, post-continuity movies not only inherit traditional continuity rules that used to be used to orient viewers in specific space and time, but also further develop usages of both continuity rules and post-continuity rules that consist of their “expressive” (Shaviro, 2010) strategies which are used to build “the structure of feeling”, or in Shaviro’s word, post-cinematic affect.

I would like to argue that post-continuity films adopt continuity rules and post-continuity rules strategically. The narrative is not abandoned, instead, some of filmmakers nowadays are building a new cinematic regime where old classical aesthetic style and new post-modern aesthetic style can coexist harmoniously.

In order to further explain my views, I’d want to use the recent movie Everything Everywhere All at Once as an aesthetically pleasing and commercially successful example of how classic continuity rules and new post-continuity rules coexist.

Everything Everywhere All at Once is a 2022 comedy-drama film written and directed by Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert and distributed by A24. The story centres on a middle-aged Chinese American immigrant named Evelyn who discovers that she has to connect with different parallel-universe versions of herself to acquire different talents which are significant to fight against a mysterious villain who tries to destroy all parallel universes.

It’s interesting how this low-budget independent film manages to blend the story of an Asian immigrant family with the popular concept of “multiverse,” which is frequently featured in Hollywood sci-fi blockbusters. What makes it even more aesthetically engaging is how it portrays “jumps across the multiverse” using the post-continuity style.

This film, in my opinion, exemplifies how post-cinematic form moves beyond classical continuity and develops a new regime where classical continuity and post-continuity are well-combined. I, therefore, made the decision to use the same example to write a two-part series of blog posts. This introductory blog post is the first one. In the next blog post, I would like to further discuss its editing styles comparing two different fight scenes.

Reference:

Stork, dir. M. (2012). Chaos Cinema. https://vimeo.com/metafilm

Shaviro, S., & Åkervall, L. (2016). Post-Continuity: An introduction’. In Screen (London) (Vol. 59, Issue 1, pp. 51–64). REFRAME Books, 2016. https://doi.org/10.1093/screen/hjy008

Shaviro, S. (n.d.). Post-Cinematic Affect: On Grace Jones, Boarding Gate and Southland Tales. Film-Philosophy, 14(1), 1–102. https://doi.org/10.3366/film.2010.0001

Ruiting Yang
4 November, 2022