Tetsuro Irie explains the films and directors that you need to watch twice to understand them. Tarantino, etc.

Commentator: Tetsuro Irie (critic)

In complex stories with multiple stories unfolding, pay attention to the "overlap points"

There are many different types of films with complex narratives, but what I would like to focus on here is a trend that emerged in the 1990s: films in which two or more stories are connected by parallel editing and told simultaneously.

Parallel editing is a technique that alternates between multiple events that take place in different locations. This technique has been around since the dawn of film, but initially there was a sense of normative use that it should be used within the scope that does not impair the overall unity, such as alternating between showing the pursuer and the pursued in a chase scene.

However, parallel editing in the 1990s tends to ignore this and accept that it's okay for the stories to be disjointed. This makes the story complicated, and if it fails, it can end up giving the impression of being a messy multiverse story (laughs).

Here, I would like to talk about what to look out for when watching a film for the second time, through the works of directors who use parallel editing in unique ways to tell complex stories while also avoiding distraction at the last minute.

Quentin Tarantino "Pulp Fiction"

First, let's start with Quentin Tarantino. The '90s trend I just mentioned was sparked by Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction. He was the one who ignored the norms surrounding parallel editing and started shuffling multiple stories in complex ways, believing that "if it's cool, that's fine."

The jumbled timeline makes it difficult for the audience to empathize with the characters, but at the same time, after watching the film, it's fun to put the pieces together like a puzzle, wondering, "So that moment connected to this moment." Tarantino has popularized this new way of looking at movies.

With that in mind, the key point to note about Tarantino is when multiple stories overlap. As I said before, if they remain separate it's too confusing and not interesting. So they need to overlap at some point, and it's those moments that make Tarantino's work so interesting cinematically.

In Pulp Fiction, Butch, played by Bruce Willis, returns to his apartment to get his gold watch, and when he opens the bathroom door, he finds Vincent, played by John Travolta, relieving himself. "Here?" he exclaims (laughs).

I think Tarantino's creativity lies in the way he overlaps characters who each play a part in a different story in unexpected places, rather than in a way that makes you think, "Here we go!"

Christopher Nolan The Dark Knight​

The door that Tarantino opened was opened by Christopher Nolan. While Tarantino's parallel editing was based on coolness, Nolan's pursues the construction of a beautiful, intelligently guided narrative structure. This tends to result in more difficult stories, but his appeal lies in his stoicism, willing to sacrifice even important things for the sake of that beautiful structure.

For example, his breakthrough film, "Memento," tells the story of a man who can only remember things for 10 minutes, edited in parallel between color footage going from the future to the past and black-and-white footage going from the past to the future. At the end, the two images overlap.

This beautiful structure is what Nolan wanted to achieve, and he probably wasn't interested in the reality of the protagonist's memory loss. Although he claims to have memory loss, he actually has a fairly good memory. Psychiatric reality is stoically omitted.

The scene in "The Dark Knight" where the hospital explodes is where this stoic parallel editing shows its dynamic power. The explosion occurs after a terrifying conversation between the Joker and Two-Face in the hospital, and this scene alone is quite worth watching. However, Nolan introduces another storyline into it.

In another plot twist, the accountant at Bruce Wayne's company is nearly killed by a civilian because the Joker has instigated the civilian to kill the accountant, who is likely to reveal that Batman is Bruce Wayne.

Then, just as the car carrying the accountant is about to be hit by a citizen's car, Bruce's Lamborghini rear-ends the car and rescues it in the nick of time, making it look like an accident.Any average director would want to drag out the build-up to the explosion scene.

However, when Nolan came up with the idea of using parallel editing to connect the suspense leading up to the hospital bombing and the suspense of whether the accountant would be killed, he had no choice but to make it a reality.

Steven Soderbergh​ ​Contagion​

I personally think that Steven Soderbergh, who sometimes edits his own films, is better at editing than Tarantino or Nolan. He's so good at it that even the most complex stories don't seem that complicated. For example, the Ocean's series, which features more than 11 characters, manages to tie the story together seamlessly.

Since Traffic, Soderbergh has made a number of ensemble dramas, but the one I want to touch on here is Contagion, a pandemic film that many people have likely seen during the COVID-19 pandemic. It's not only notable for its skillful editing, but also for the way it subtly yet effectively layers multiple storylines.

First, let's review the story's plot. A woman named Beth returns to the United States from a business trip to Hong Kong and loses consciousness and dies. She is the first person to be infected with the new virus, but this is not revealed until halfway through the story. A global pandemic then breaks out, and as the stories of Beth's husband Mitch, the people working at an infectious disease center in the United States, and the WHO researchers in Hong Kong unfold simultaneously, a vaccine is eventually developed and the situation is resolved.

The scene I want to draw your attention to is the one where Mitch is interviewed by the woman from the infectious disease center. In fact, Beth's affair is shown at the beginning of the film, and it is during this interview that Mitch finds out about it. It is a short scene, but it subtly overlaps the stories of three people: Mitch, the woman from the infectious disease center, and Beth.

Even more amazing is the final scene. With a vaccine already developed and the situation coming to an end, Mitch discovers Beth's digital camera in his house. Looking inside, he finds a photo of Beth looking happy in Hong Kong just before she died, and Mitch bursts into tears. On the surface, this is a touching climax to Mitch's story, but Soderbergh doesn't end it there.

This is because the photograph in the scene is the very evidence that shows the source of the virus that the researchers were searching for in the other storylines. In other words, in this scene, the stories of Mitch, Beth, and the researchers searching for the source of the virus all come together, and it's incredibly moving.

Again, Soderbergh is able to tell a complex story so seamlessly that many people may be satisfied with just one viewing.

However, if you watch it a second time and look more closely at the details, you'll likely notice many other ingenious touches, and this is probably true for other directors as well. Finding your own way of enjoying a film in this way is what makes watching a film with a complex story so enjoyable.