To create a child through art—something that will last beyond you—is a work with potential to yield through the next many hundred years. It’s important to note also that what will be remembered the most is not the Great American novel, but the Christmas story.

There are two movies that were released a year apart, both flawed but one remembered fondly, the other largely reviled despite some acclaim. The first is a movie called ‘Love Actually.’ Taking place on a Christmas in London, ‘Love Actually’ weaves together eight different relationships undergoing a kind of change. The second is a movie that won the 2006 Academy Award, debuting at the Toronto International Film Festival called ‘Crash,’ written and directed by an Angeleno named Paul Haggis and addressing what some might call post-racial America.

It’s my intention to address to you the meaning of a genre that’s spanned roughly a decade and a half and traversed through virtually every genre imaginable. However, to do the genre justice, it would be more just to find a book’s length of material and serve it to you that way. But I’ve never written a book. The next best thing will be to attempt briefly to unearth a long forgotten cinematic genre that continues to live in our culture in a quiet sort of way.

I’ve given the genre a name, though it does sometimes fly by the term Hyperlink Cinema. Sort of like the term podcast, I wonder if the title given to it is more aligned with the way in which culture existed in the time in which many of these films came about, and less aligned with what actually makes this genre interesting or worthwhile. It’s also interesting to note that almost everything in this genre is considered bad or flawed in many ways. This is probably why the genre doesn’t really exist in our public consciousness now, despite the fact that I have discovered around 40 to 50 films that live in this genre and that every single year I see something or another that reflects back what was created within this time frame.

The arbitrary origin point I’ve found that guides me towards the beginning of this movement is Robert Altman, and specifically his movie ‘Nashville.’ I’m drawn to this because it exemplifies four major points that make this genre something I’d call an “Ensemble Opera.” The first aspect is obviously that it contains a large ensemble. The second is that it revolves around heightened stakes. The finale of ‘Nashville’ feels similar to the midpoint in ‘Crash,’ the kitchen-table drama leaping into violence. The third is that the tone is somewhat postmodern, that it’s thoughtful but cynical. This is harder to quantify but think about ‘Mr. Robot,’ David Fincher, the stereotypical Gen X mentality. The fourth is that it usually makes its theme the main character. The theme could be more esoteric: ‘Magnolia’ is my favorite in this genre, and the theme is about chance and probability, which thinly weaves a behemoth of a plot together.

This is more or less my thesis, and already it resembles an essay of its own. There are many questions I’ve pondered and answered for myself: Why did ‘Crash’ in 2006 win the Oscar for Best Picture over ‘Brokeback Mountain?’ Some say homophobia, others say because of the dawn of ranked-choice voting at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts. I think that it’s both, and also a secret third thing. To explain involves the decades-long buildup of a genre weaving characters together through an unknowable and often unfriendly world.

‘Pulp Fiction’ in 1994 takes this concept and designs it in a non-linear fashion to explore the world of the LA criminal underground and subvert what kind of person would make it their home, which lives on in shows like ‘Barry’ on HBO. ‘Love Actually,’ beloved by a polar opposite group of people, lives on in shows like ‘This is Us.’ Most major directors of the 1990s Indie Revolution did their Ensemble Opera: Richard Linklater did ‘Slacker,’ Darren Aronofsky did ‘Requiem for a Dream,’ Steven Soderbergh did ‘Traffic,’ and Alejandro González Iñárritu made three, and I’ve already discussed Paul Thomas Anderson and Quentin Tarantino making the cut. Many of these movies involved drugs and tragedy, but in 2003 this genre became more mainstream with ‘Love Actually’ and a slew of other holiday-related ensemble operas.

Most recently, a favorite of mine is ‘Weapons,’ which combines a non-linear storytelling style with a wider ensemble-based horror narrative. This is a much tighter script than something like ‘Crash’ or ‘Magnolia,’ or even the Bruce Willis section of ‘Pulp Fiction.’ But for every one of those, there’s ‘Laurel Canyon,’ ‘11:14,’ or more quietly beloved movies like Doug Liman’s ‘Go’ or Todd Solondz’s ‘Happiness.’ More than half of the canon is a both messy and ambitious final collection, but it’s that ambition that seems to continually permeate culture.

‘Crash’ is not a good movie, and it’s considered by many to be the worst of the Best Picture winners. It mixes cynicism with sincerity, plays cheap tricks on its audience, and gives many characters short shrift while leaving the worst of the bunch with an incredible amount of redemption. By putting these characters in unrealistic situations, making routinely wrong or cynical choices out of the blue, Haggis is painting a detailed portrait with the widest brush. He’s also trying to communicate something that exists beyond himself, trying to show every crevice of the world around him to build a tapestry of something larger. When this is done best, like in ‘Requiem for a Dream,’ it’s immersive and unreplicable. Even still, as Christmas rolls around this season, you’ll see more and more people readying up their copy of ‘Love Actually,’ an ambitious treatise on the meaning of love itself wrapped inside the well-trod route of the romcom. I love this genre. Most of the movies in it are confusing or digressing, but that’s exactly what makes them great.