By Parul Ohri
Who amongst us has not wished they could go back in time just for a few minutes, and set something right, meet someone once more, say what was left unsaid?  Now, what if you got a chance to do all this for a grand window of 8 minutes…but you were clinically dead?

That, in a nutshell is the central plot of Source Code (2011), that may be broadly thought of as a sci-fi, time travel thriller, but also stands as an exemplary manifestation of Steven Shapiro’s “post cinematic affect”. U.S. Army Captain Colter Stevens (Jake Gyllenhaal) is part of an experimental government programme that allows him to repeatedly live the final 8 minutes of another man’s life to identify a commuter train bomber.

In vast contrast to traditional narrative logic, sequences multiply frenetically as Stevens relives the 8 minute simulation repeatedly, diverge as each iteration plays out differently and folds back into the place of origin, in a manner that is anything but ‘linear.’ It is akin to a gamified loop, where the player dies repeatedly and restarts to “get it right.” Shaviro posits that post-cinematic media acts as a “machine for generating affect,” and I could relate to that completely, feeling each reset viscerally, a nervous digital anxiety that stayed till the end. Post continuity cinema, as per Shaviro, is characterised by quick, repetitive, and digitally enhanced scenes, where the action takes a backseat to the affect or the immediate sensory impact. This, despite what theorists refer to as ‘instrumental reasoning’ of film viewers, which is their inherent ability to know that these things are not real, even if perceptually they appear realistic.

I also found it interesting how Source Code lent itself perfectly to Shaviro’s concept of “cognitive mapping,” where he explores depictions of power dynamics in a post-cinematic era. Colter Stevens is “used” without consent as “human capital” in a government experiment, with no discussion about the ethics of such an exercise.  

Space is completely reconceptualized or rather deconceptualized in Source Code, illustrating perfectly Gilles Deleuze’s concept of the ‘any-space-whatever’ and Marc Auge’s concept of the non-place. The capsule where the protagonist finds himself in every loop is a manifestation, as is the train that becomes the site for the narrative, without any more ontological reality as the people that ride on it.  

And yet a parallel world is created, with some who retained memories of the previous (real) one and some who were erased. I went along with the plot but for one unresolved point, and do weigh in on this one – what do you think happened to Sean Fentress?

Steven Shaviro, ‘Post-Cinematic Affect: On Grace Jones, Boarding Gate and Southland Tales’, Film Philosophy 14.1, 2010.

Brown, William, ‘Digital Cinema’s Conquest of Space’ SuperCinema: Film-Philosophy for the Digital Age (Oxford: Berghahn, 2013).

Source Code (2011), Dir. Duncan Jones, USA.