Jay, a reader, writes to complain about what he calls "chopped-up" movies and what I would call a "fractured narrative," you know, movies that have beginnings, middles and ends but not in that order. (Think Pulp Fiction and Memento.) For him, the latest offender is (500) Days of Summer. I very much enjoyed the film about an aspiring architect who begins the movie by telling us his relationship ended and that he doesn't know why, and then recalls, non-chronologically, the highs and lows of the affair the way one might recall it for a friend who wasn't around.
For Jay, this is "a cheap attempt to create suspense where there shouldn't really be any. I also heard someone say that chopping the movie up keeps the viewer on his toes while watching it. But again, I just feel like this is a cheat, in that if the movie were interesting enough in the first place, the viewer wouldn't need a trick like that to stay involved." (My only issue with (500) Days is that I find the Zooey Deschanel character irritatingly self-conscious.)
The earliest case of a fractured narrative that I know of is The Power and the Glory, a 1933 Spencer Tracy film written by Preston Sturges about a rags-to-riches industrialist. The story is told in flashback, intercutting the industrialist's rise to power with his fall from grace, and many cite it as a precursor of Citizen Kane. For me, this structure mimics that of a mystery, where the viewer gets jigsaw pieces of information and tries to fit them together for the big picture.
I'm more an admirer than a fan of Pulp Fiction, so I might be inclined to agree with Jay that its structure is more gimmicky than not. But I'd be interested to know if other readers agree or disagree with him. Give examples of your most/least favorite fractured narrative.
"Mosiac" filmmaking (as I like to call these nonlinear films) can be really effective narrative forms. Both Atom Egoyan and Alejandro González Iñárritu have practically built their reputations on such storytelling. It's only gimmicky when it doesn't work. SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE anyone?— garyk- Yes, "mosaic films" is a good descriptor, as is "mobius-strip" film, where the narrative twists back into itself. Inarittu, for those unfamiliar with the name, directed "21 Grams" and "Amores Perros."— carrierickey
- I don't have nearly as much of a problem with mere "flashbacks" as long as they don't overpower the forward motion of the main storyline. Slumdog Millionaire didn't feel quite as fractured to me, because technically, the plot was the game show and the flashbacks were there primarily to show how he happened to know the answers to the questions, and secondarily to show how far his life had come.— jayfest
The best use of mosaic is not in a theatrical film but rather a BBC TV series, the awesome "The Singing Detective" with Michael Gambon in his pre-Dumbledore days. It features three separate but interconnected narratives: the present day reality of the protagonist in a hospital ward; the flashbacks to his childhood in WWII England; and the fictional detective story he's reworking in his mind as he languishes in hospital. Some of the finest TV drama I've ever seen; nothing compared to it until The Wire came along.- Yes, but is "forward motion" (quoting jayfest) necessarily what the film in question is about? Often fragmentation and non-linear filmmaking are good when creating an atmosphere of fatalism and/or trauma. That's certainly the case with the film I point to, when forced, as my "favorite" -- Richard Lester's "Petulia" -- as well as for the superb noir "Out of the Past."— chris schneider
- Jay writes that the "fractured timeline" (my phrase) masks a weak script that otherwise couldn't stand on its own. It isn't meant to do so. Filmmaking is a collaborative art consisting of many different components: script, editing, cinematography, set design, etc. The resultant totality IS the film and in the case of "500 Days" the chopped up narrative is but one element. I find films that "don't play it straight" to be both enjoyable and realistic. If any of us think back on our lives or a specific incident within that life, the images that our mind presents us are not in a neat, orderly time frame. We usally remember things out of order in bits and pieces, thus validating those films (or books) that use this device. It it definitly not "a cheap attempt to create suspense", in my opinon.— janschmidt
- Clade Lelouch's "The Crook" ("Le voyou," 1970). Sublime.— Pash
- Claude Lelouch's "The Crook" ("Le voyou," 1970). Sublime.— Pash
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