For the analysis of Postmodernism, I have chosen the trailers of two of my favourite movies: “Adaptation” provided by Mariel and “Magnolia” from one of my favourite films directors, Paul Thomas Anderson.

This is the link for “Magnolia”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zwXDHSrNFbQ

Features of Postmodernism present in “Magnolia”:

· Questioning the grand narratives: this film questions the concept of religion as it is an aesthetic movie.
· Lack of distinction between game and reality: The whole story goes around a game show.
· Subjectivity: Stream of consciousness. The director lets us get inside the characters’ minds and hearts with dazzling style.
· Mini narratives and Simultaneity: The film deals with different stories at the same time. It is a Rhizone story as it shows connections between events and people without any causative explanation.

Features of Postmodernism present in “Adaptation”:

· Simultaneity and simulacra: The film mixes the present with not only the past and future, but also with the imaginary. Adaptation is about a script writer's process of adapting a book to film and an author's process of writing a book about a real man and events in his life.
· Multiplicity and incompatibility: Time, place and people are constantly jumbled throughout the story. Lots of things existing at the same time but not forming any kind of pattern or unity (“Pastiche”)
· Subjectivity: Use of stream of consciousness to let the audience get inside the characters’ minds and feelings.
· Self-reflexivity: Characters do learn lessons, grown and change: “the only truth we can offer is the truth that's our own experience of the world" (Adaptation).