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  • 1, 2, 3, 4 Futures—Ludic Forms in Narrative Films
  • Henriette Heidbrink (bio)

"One might say that 'chance' is anything but blind in forking-path narratives."

— Edward Branigan (105)

Fictional worlds attract the attention of debaters in particular when they are supposed to activate the viewers' reflections in a special way. Thus, movies that are most likely to irritate the audience and seem to animate people to reflect on their own personality and life are of major interest. In the following, I want to discuss a certain type of movie that meets these criteria: forking-path or multiple-draft narratives. On the one hand they rely on well-known narrative schemata, and on the other hand they comprise something that is actually impossible: alternative futures. One central thesis raised by spokespersons of the forking-path-debate claims that, when the narration of a movie triggers alternative trajectories or alternative futures, it is also very likely to stimulate alternative interpretations.

My contribution to the debate will be the introduction of what I call "morphologic observation." This way of analyzing narratives is meant to answer critics who would rightly ask for systematic grounds of interpretation, since the common flaws of hermeneutics are known. I want to introduce a type of systematic monitoring focused on the narrative structures of films.

I will argue that multiple-draft narratives are often augmented with ludic forms that come with their own game-logics, and thereby trigger certain types of interpretative questions. Furthermore, the ludic forms are used as devices that provide for coincidence and determination. Hence this article is focused on the interdependencies of ludic forms and narrative contexts by dwelling on the dichotomy of coincidence and determination.

The Forking-Path Debate

The academic discussion that I call the forking-path debate was initiated by David Bordwell, who analyzed some new narrative devices by discussing different types of "film futures" in an article with the same title in SubStance in 2002. In that same issue, Edward Branigan and Kay Young replied to Bordwell's analysis of these slightly deviant narratives. While Bordwell emphasized the necessity of "cohesion devices" holding [End Page 146] his "compensation-thesis" that "[...] the more radically the film evokes multiple times, the more constrained it must be on other fronts" ("Futures" 102f; Hollywood 103), his respondents Branigan and Young dwelled especially on the mind-opening options that these films possibly offer to the audience. Both held the view that the discussed films triggered reflections about phenomena such as time, coincidence, determination, fortune, decision-making, slips, and failures.

Bordwell mainly dealt with "forking-path" films that show clear narrative constructions, like splits or repetitions. Branigan focused on rather implicit multiple-drafts that trigger hypotheses about the "nearly true," due to their reliance on "hidden 'narrative morphs'" (110). Young was mainly interested in the capability of our imaginations in relation to the implied story-alternatives (116).1 What seems remarkable is the fact that all three authors were concerned with narrative constructions that feature a generous range of variation when looking at the receptions they might elicit. There are two points that seem worth highlighting:

1. The boundaries of different story-realms are permeable.

Bordwell adverted to the "crosstalk between futures" ("Futures" 99), stating that the "markers of forking-path plots seem unable to resist contaminating one another" (ibid., 98). This permeability can be generated in quite different ways: by mental phenomena such as déjà-vu and memories, as in Sliding Doors (1998) or Groundhog Day (1993). But it can also be established by technical or media devices, like the joint-constructions that allow time- and space-travel via diary in The Butterfly Effect (2004), the time-window-technology in Deja Vu (2006), or the technological option to invade human minds through dreams in Inception (2010).

The same applies to the learning processes that pervade different story versions, such as when Lola (Franka Potente) in Run Lola Run (1998) manages to force the roulette-ball into the black number twenty and thereby arranges for her boy-friend's and her own future (cf. Bordwell, "Futures" 99).2 In contrast to videogames, narrative worlds seem to a lesser extent enclosed due to the fact that...

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