Post-continuity is a set of techniques indexed to new technologies like non-linear digital editing that generates new forms of sensibility. It is a structure of feeling that is different from how we usually watch films. Denson, Leyda, and Shaviro, (2016, p. 51) use the notion of “post-continuity” to describe a type of filmmaking that has become popular in action films. Post-cinema consists of nonlinear and complex narratives; including parallel storylines, flashbacks, and flash-forwards, montage editing, intertextual references to films, and fragmentation.

“‘Post-cinema’ is not the end of a model, but rather the return of its original characteristics. The borderline situations that we find today also illuminate the paths that were intuited but never really taken. […] Post-cinema is also the realization of possibilities left unexplored.” (Casetti, 2015, pp. 39-40).

Inception by Christopher Nolan uses post-continuity to create disorientation and blur between dreams and reality. An example of this is the ending scene where the spinning top keeps spinning, just as it’s about to be revealed, it cuts to the credits and ends leaving it to the viewer’s mind. It asks the question is it a dream or reality? It is nonlinear storytelling that has multiple interpretations.

Chaos cinema is “the art of shaky handheld cameras, extreme or even impossible camera angles, and much composited digital material—all stitched together with rapid cuts, frequently involving deliberately mismatched shots. The sequence becomes a jagged collage of fragments of explosions, crashes, physical lunges, and violently accelerated motions” (Denson, Leyda, and Shaviro, 2016, P. 51).

We see this in Inception at the rotating hallway fight scene. A revolving hotel hallway that defies gravity. Arthur is fighting projections of the subconscious mind. Rapid cuts, ambiguous angles, and camera movement all add to the chaotic and unstable atmosphere. As the characters manoeuvre through shifting surroundings, the audience is treated to an exciting and intense journey. Disorientation is increased by handheld camera usage and editing techniques.

One of the techniques that post-cinema includes is the notion of Hyperlink cinema, which is characterised by complex or multi-linear narrative structures with multiple characters under one theme. There are several separate, unconnected, and unrelated storylines that gradually over time merge into a single overarching storyline. Inception uses hyperlinks between different layers of conciseness which creates an interconnected narrative, we see dreams within dreams. The scene with the disorientation of a paradoxical stairway shows a staircase that is in a loop to itself.

By James Farrell

References:

Casetti, F. (2015) ‘Relocation’, The Lumière Galaxy, pp. 17–42. doi:10.7312/columbia/9780231172431.003.0002. 

Denson, S., Leyda, J., and Shaviro, S. (2016). Post-Cinema: Theorizing 21st-Century Film. Falmer: REFRAME Books.