Personally, I find the mind game films very entertaining. You always have to look for clues and subliminal messages just like a detective does! In this regard, the similarities between a classical detective story and a MGF are quite obvious. When we look at the structure of detective stories, we see that it usually starts off with a crime, continues with the clue finding process (in which we typically suspect more than one person) and ends with the detective’s success or failure of finding the suspect. In MGF’s we have a flow similar to the detective story except the ending. To give an example, when you look at Haneke’s “Cache”, the first two elements are visible whereas only the last one is lacking. The same thing is true for other films such as “The Unknown Code” and “Lost Highway”. In this sense the films we categorize as MGF’s begins to seem quite “uncomplicated”. Of course, than comes the question than what else might there be in these films, that makes them MGF’s? The example above shows that the story is not enough on its own. (I know we discussed all the other possible elements such as plot, narrative, psychology, etc.)
I believe that the essential part that makes us define a film as MGF, is our construction of identities as the audience. What I mean is this: we assume we know everything or at least, we are able to cope with situations that might appear during a film. This is the basic element that Hollywood construct while defining an audience. This is to say that over the time the cinema evolved, the viewer learned the language of cinema. Now everyone knows how to interpret a scene and the symbols that are typically used. The famous saying that “when a gun is shown in a scene , it means it will be used” explains this situation clearly. The audience knows what will happen or at least is in control of the situation since s/he is used to the language and the structure. MGF’s on the other hand, puts the audience just in the opposite place. We know nothing about the universe we are entering. That makes most people uncomfortable, which is understandable since they are used to being in control. MGF’s play tricks with the audience’s minds, deceits their understanding. To give an example from the film “Lost Highway”, a mystery man suddenly arrives at our protagonist, who is having problems of his own up until that moment, and says “We have met before, haven’t we.” When our protagonist says he doesn’t remember, he tells him that he is actually in his house right now. And proves this by making him phone his own number and speak to him on the phone while he is still standing there. Now, this realm is out of the ordinary for the audience. They think, a person cannot be in two places at the same time! But this is the reality taught to us since we were children. So the viewer is facing a dilemma and therefore is uncomfortable. The aim of MGF’s is this uncomfortable feeling, which makes you question the nature of reality. What is real? How can we prove something is real or not?, etc.
So this makes me think that the basic step in defining a film as MGF, is to look at the position of the audience. How do they relate to the events and characters in a film. This is actually disregarded in most articles but I think its very important.
Alev Degim
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