ABSTRACT
Babel (Iñárritu 2006) and Lantana (Lawrence 2001) belong to a genre described as network cinema that has flourished around the world since the early 1990s. Well known examples include Code Unknown (Haneke 2000), Crash (Haggis 2004), Magnolia (Anderson 1999) and The Edge of Heaven (Akin 2007). This genre belongs to a broader contemporary imaginary concerning social networks. For instance, David Mitchell’s novel Cloud Atlas (2004) and Sebastian Faulks’s A Week in December (2011) similarly depict networks of interconnecting strangers and acquaintances. While there is contention over how to label the film genre (see Quart 2005; Everett 2005, 159; del Mar Azcona 2010, 1; Pisters 2011), I take as my point of departure the point made by both David Bordwell and Paul Kerr that “network cinema” is the most appropriate term (Bordwell 2007, 191; Kerr 2010, 40). It signals both the films’ social thematics regarding the paradigm of network society (Castells 2000, 3) and industrial practices (since the films frequently rely on networked modes of production and distribution). As well as networked production technologies, home-viewing technologies have been instrumental in the genre’s popularity. DVDs and the Internet have provided both artistic and commercial incentives for film-makers to convey complex narratives which require multiple viewings to solve the narrative puzzles (Bordwell 2006, 74).
