This study explores the historical development of nonlinear narrative with a focus on the film theory of Gilles Deleuze. As cinema evolved from the era of mechanical reproduction through the digital era to the AI era, the organizational logic of narra...
This study explores the historical development of nonlinear narrative with a focus on the film theory of Gilles Deleuze. As cinema evolved from the era of mechanical reproduction through the digital era to the AI era, the organizational logic of narrative gradually shifted from the human subject to the dispositif. The paper first reviews Deleuze’s key concepts, including the ‘Movement-Image’, the ‘Time-Image’, and ‘Becoming’, and then integrates them with Michel Foucault’s concept of the ‘Dispositif’ and Jean Baudrillard’s notion of ‘Simulacra’ for a comprehensive discussion. Three representative films are analyzed to examine the characteristics of nonlinear narrative in each period. <Un Chien Andalou>(1929) from the mechanical reproduction era demonstrates how dream logic and the rupture of causality subvert linear storytelling. <Lola Rennt>(1998) from the digital era reveals how multiple timelines bring nonlinear mechanisms to the forefront of narrative. <Sunspring>(2016) from the AI era shows that narrative generation is no longer governed by human psychology or action but is instead driven by signs and probabilistic models of AI algorithms. Throughout the evolution of nonlinear narrative, time as the generative condition of cinema has shifted from human experience to the operational dimension of technological and institutional networks. In the AI era, nonlinear narrative gradually rewrites its ontological core as a mode of generation occurring at the level of the dispositif.