QUANTUM MONTAGE: NARRATIVE CONTINGENCY AS SPECTATORIAL FREEDOM IN JIA ZHANGKE'S CAUGHT BY THE TIDES
QUANTUM MONTAGE: NARRATIVE CONTINGENCY AS SPECTATORIAL FREEDOM IN JIA ZHANGKE'S CAUGHT BY THE TIDES

Summary/Abstract: This paper argues that Jia Zhangke’s 2024 film, Caught by the Tides, offers a paradigmatic view on “quantum montage”, a cinematic narrative approach which expresses a Chinese anti-teleological philosophical model. In Jia Zhangke’s film, fiction coexists with documentary, and past films from the author ’s filmography with their archival recycling. Such an approach to cinema ties its indeterminacy to spectatorial freedom. By using theories from quantum mechanics (such as the many-worlds theory, quantum entanglement, the uncertainty principle, position and momentum, superposition and collapse or spectatorial experience as measurement), as well Deleuze’s crystal-image, we propose to define quantum montage as a crystalline narrative device, a direct syntactic image of spacetime. Without engaging in an overly - mimetic instrumental comparison between narratology and quantum mechanics, this paper follows how Jia Zhangke’s work and, specifically, Caught by the Tides, aligns its quantum montage with the algorithmic contingency of the present episteme.

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