Hyperlink cinema is a style of filmmaking characterized by complex or multilinear narrative structures with multiple characters under one unifying theme.[1]
History
The term was coined by author
Alissa Quart, who used the term in her review of the film Happy Endings (2005) for the film journal Film Comment in 2005.[2] Film critic
Roger Ebert popularized the term when reviewing the film Syriana in 2005.[3] These films are not
hypermedia and do not have actual
hyperlinks, but are multilinear in a more metaphorical sense.
In describing Happy Endings, Quart considers captions acting as
footnotes and
split screen as elements of hyperlink cinema and notes the influence of the World Wide Web and
multitasking.[2] Playing with time and characters' personal history,
plot twists, interwoven storylines between multiple characters, jumping between the beginning and end (
flashback and
flashforward) are also elements.[2] Ebert further described hyperlink cinema as films where the characters or action reside in separate stories, but a connection or influence between those disparate stories is slowly revealed to the audience; illustrated in Mexican director
Alejandro González Iñárritu's films Amores perros (2000), 21 Grams (2003), and Babel (2006).[3][4]
One of the 2017
Tamil Language
actionthriller film
Maanagaram involves an
everyman who moves to the an
IndianmegacityChennai, were he gets intertwined with four other lives as they strive to achieve success in the city when a vicious gangster threatens them. The director
Lokesh Kanagaraj mentioned one of the female protaganist's role as the link among these characters throughout the film and that the theme of the entire film had a heavy influence from his admiration on the works of director
Quentin Tarantino.
The style is also used in video games. French video game company
Quantic Dream has produced games, such as Heavy Rain and Detroit: Become Human, with hyperlink cinema style storytelling, and the style has also influenced role-playing games such as Suikoden III (2001) and Octopath Traveler (2018).
Analysis
The hyperlink cinema narrative and story structure can be compared to social science's
spatial analysis. As described by Edward Soja and
Costis Hadjimichalis spatial analysis examines the "'horizontal experience' of human life, the spatial dimension of individual behavior and social relations, as opposed to the 'vertical experience' of history, tradition, and biography."[10] English critic
John Berger notes for the novel that "it is scarcely any longer possible to tell a straight story sequentially unfolding in time" for "we are too aware of what is continually traversing the story line laterally."[10]
An academic analysis of hyperlink cinema appeared in the journal Critical Studies in Media Communication, and referred to the films as Global Network Films. Narine's study examines the films Traffic (2000), Amores perros (2000), 21 Grams (2003), Beyond Borders (2003), Crash (2004; released 2005), Syriana (2005), Babel (2006) and others, citing network theorist
Manuel Castells and philosophers
Michel Foucault and
Slavoj Žižek. The study suggests that the films are network narratives that map the
network society and the new connections citizens experience in the age of
globalization.[11]
Alberto Toscano and Jeff Kinkle have argued that one popular form of hyperlink cinema constitutes a contemporary form of
it-narrative, an 18th- and 19th-century genre of fiction written from the imagined perspective of objects as they move between owners and social environments.[12] In these films, they argue, "the narrative link is the characters' relation to the film's product of choice, whether it be guns, cocaine, oil, or Nile perch."[12]
^
abGhatak, Ritwik (2000). Rows and Rows of Fences: Ritwik Ghatak on Cinema. Ritwik Memorial & Trust Seagull Books. pp. ix & 134–36.
ISBN81-7046-178-2.
^
abSoja, Edward W.; Hadjimichalis, Costis (1979). "Between Geographical Materialism and Spatial Fetishism: Some Observations on the Development of Marxist Spatial Analysis". Antipode. 17 (2–3): 59–67.
doi:
10.1111/j.1467-8330.1985.tb00334.x.