Nonlinear (arts)
Encyclopedia
Nonlinear narrative, disjointed narrative or disrupted narrative is a narrative technique
, sometimes used in literature
, film, hypertext
websites and other narratives, wherein events are portrayed out of chronological order. It is often used to mimic the structure and recall of human memory
but has been applied for other reasons as well.
(Latin: "into the middle of things") began in ancient times as an oral tradition and was established as a convention of epic poetry
with Homer
's Iliad
in the 8th century BC. The technique of narrating most of the story in flashback
also dates back to the Indian epic
, the Mahabharata
, around the 5th century BC. Several medieval Arabian Nights tales such as "Sinbad the Sailor
", "The City of Brass" and "The Three Apples" also had nonlinear narratives employing the in medias res and flashback techniques.
From the late 19th century and early 20th century, modernist
novelists Joseph Conrad
, Virginia Woolf
, Ford Madox Ford
, Marcel Proust
, and William Faulkner
experimented with narrative chronology and abandoning linear order.
Examples of nonlinear novels are: Luís Vaz de Camões's The Lusiads, Laurence Sterne
's The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman
(1759–67), Thomas Carlyle
's Sartor Resartus
(ca. 1833), Emily Brontë
's Wuthering Heights
(1847), James Joyce's
Ulysses
(1922) and Finnegans Wake
(1939), Sadeq Hedayat's The Blind Owl
(1937), William S. Burroughs'
Naked Lunch
(1959), Joseph Heller
's Catch-22
(1961), Muriel Spark
's The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1961), Kurt Vonnegut's
Slaughterhouse-Five
(1969), Milorad Pavić's
Dictionary of the Khazars
(1988), Irvine Welsh
's Trainspotting
(1993), Carole Maso
's Ava: a novel (1993) and Tim O'Brien
's Going After Cacciato
(1979).
Scott McCloud
argues in Understanding Comics
that the narration of comics is nonlinear because it relies on the reader's choices and interactions.
s or flashforward
s within a linear storyline, while nonlinear films often contain linear sequences. Orson Welles'
Citizen Kane
(1941) — influenced structurally by The Power and the Glory (1933) — and Akira Kurosawa
's Rashomon
(1950) use a non-chronological flashback narrative that is often labeled nonlinear.
era, including D.W. Griffith's Intolerance
(1916) and Abel Gance
's Napoléon (1927). Nonlinear film emerged from the French avant-garde
in 1929 with Luis Buñuel
and Salvador Dalí
's Un Chien Andalou
(English: An Andalusian Dog). The surrealist film jumps into fantasy and juxtaposes images, granting the filmmakers an ability to create statements about the Church, art, and society that are left open to interpretation. Buñuel and Dali's L'Âge d'Or
(1930) (English: The Golden Age) also uses nonlinear concepts. The revolutionary Russian filmmakers Sergei Eisenstein
, Vsevolod Pudovkin
, and Alexander Dovzhenko
also experimented with the possibilities of nonlinearity. Eisenstein's Strike
(1925) and Dovzhenko's Earth
(1930) hint at a nonlinear experience. English director Humphrey Jennings
used a nonlinear approach in his World War II documentary Listen to Britain (1942).
's work since 1959 was also important in the evolution of nonlinear film. Godard famously stated, "I agree that a film should have a beginning, a middle and an end but not necessarily in that order". Godard's Week End (French: Le weekend) (1968), as well as Andy Warhol
's Chelsea Girls
(1966), defy linear structure in exchange for a chronology of events that is seemingly random. Alain Resnais
experimented with narrative and time in his films Hiroshima Mon Amour
(1959), Last Year at Marienbad
(1961), and Muriel
(1963). Federico Fellini
defined his own nonlinear cinema with the films La strada
(1954), La dolce vita (1960), 8½
(1963), Satyricon
(1969), and Roma
(1972). Nicolas Roeg
's films, including Performance
(1968), Walkabout
(1971), Don't Look Now
(1973), The Man Who Fell to Earth
(1976), and Bad Timing
(1980) are characterized by a nonlinear approach. Other experimental nonlinear filmmakers include Michelangelo Antonioni
, Peter Greenaway
, Chris Marker
, Agnès Varda
, and Raúl Ruiz.
In the United States, Robert Altman
carried the nonlinear motif in his films, including McCabe & Mrs. Miller
(1971), Nashville (1975), The Player
(1992), Short Cuts
(1993), and Gosford Park
(2001). Woody Allen
embraced the experimental nature of nonlinear narrative in Annie Hall
(1977), Interiors
(1978), and Stardust Memories
(1980).
influenced a tremendous growth in nonlinear films with Pulp Fiction
(1994). Other important nonlinear films include Atom Egoyan
's Exotica
(1994), Terrence Malick
's The Thin Red Line
(1998), Paul Thomas Anderson
's Magnolia
(1999), and Karen and Jill Sprecher
's Thirteen Conversations About One Thing
(2001). David Lynch
experimented with nonlinear narrative and surrealism
in Lost Highway (1997), Mulholland Dr.
(2001), and Inland Empire
(2006).
In the years leading into and the beginning of the 21st century, some filmmakers have returned to the use of nonlinear narrative repeatedly, including Steven Soderbergh
in Schizopolis
(1996), Out of Sight
(1998), The Limey
(1999), Full Frontal
(2002), Solaris
(2002), and Che
(2008); Christopher Nolan
in Following (1998), Memento (2001), The Prestige
(2006), and Inception
(2010). Memento, with its fragmentation and reverse chronology
, has been described as characteristic of moving towards postmodernism
in contemporary cinema. Richard Linklater
used nonlinear narrative in Slacker
(1991), Waking Life
(2001), and A Scanner Darkly
(2006); Gus Van Sant
in Elephant (2003), Last Days
(2005), and Paranoid Park
(2007). Hong Kong auteur Wong Kar-wai
explored nonlinear storylines in the films Days of Being Wild
(1991), Ashes of Time
(1994), Chungking Express
(1994), In the Mood for Love
(2000), and 2046
(2004). Fernando Meirelles
in City of God and The Constant Gardener
. All of Alejandro González Iñárritu
's films to date feature nonlinear narratives. Takashi Shimizu
's Japanese horror series, Ju-on
, brought to America as The Grudge
, is also nonlinear in its storytelling.
series sometimes present their plot in nonlinear order. In The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, for example, the episodes were deliberately aired in non-chronological order. A more nonlinear example is Baccano!
, where every scene is displayed in non-chronological order, with most scenes taking place at various times during the early 1930s and some scenes taking place before (extending back to the 18th century) and after (extending forward to the 21st century). Other examples include Yami to Bōshi to Hon no Tabibito
, Touka Gettan, Rental Magica
, Ergo Proxy
, Fullmetal Alchemist
and (partly) Boogiepop Phantom
.
The ABC
television series Lost
makes extensive use of nonlinear story telling, with each episode typically featuring a primary storyline on the island as well as a secondary storyline from another point in a character's life, either past or future.
FX's Emmy Award
winning legal drama Damages
starring Glenn Close
, begins each season with an intensely melodramatic event taking place and then traveling back six months earlier. Throughout the season, each episode shows events both in the past, present, and future that lead up to and follow said event.
The English sitcom Coupling
would often utilize non-linear narratives in which groups of men and women would independently discuss an event, after which (or during) the event would be portrayed.
series), adventure game
s (such as Shadow of Memories
), survival horrors (such as the Resident Evil and Silent Hill
games), stealth games (such as Metal Gear Solid
) and platform game
s (such as Sega
's spin-off game, Shadow the Hedgehog
).
Some video games mimic film non-linearity by presenting a single plot in a chronologically distorted way instead of letting the player determine the story flow themselves. The first-person shooter
Tribes: Vengeance
is an example of this; another is Sega's Sonic Adventure
.
Oftentimes game developers use the idea of character amnesia in games. Character amnesia helps give a game a beginning because the audience only has the understanding that there is a preceding history before the events of the game take place. The character's amnesia allows the developers more leniency with what possibilities or paths the audience can potentially take. This option of choosing paths ultimately results in the development of a non-linear story. Furthermore by creating a nonlinear story line the complexity of game play is greatly expanded. As stated earlier, non-linear game play allows for greater replay value which allows the player to put together the different pieces of a potentially puzzling storyline. This idea of having a complex and deep storyline while the user has little or no prior knowledge of past events is clearly evident in games like Facade. In Facade the player is put into a situation that lasts approximately 10 to 15 minutes in real time yet the events recalled seem to have a basis in years of dramatic history.
Nonlinear narrative films
Narratology
Narratology denotes both the theory and the study of narrative and narrative structure and the ways that these affect our perception. While in principle the word may refer to any systematic study of narrative, in practice its usage is rather more restricted. It is an anglicisation of French...
, sometimes used in literature
Literature
Literature is the art of written works, and is not bound to published sources...
, film, hypertext
Hypertext
Hypertext is text displayed on a computer or other electronic device with references to other text that the reader can immediately access, usually by a mouse click or keypress sequence. Apart from running text, hypertext may contain tables, images and other presentational devices. Hypertext is the...
websites and other narratives, wherein events are portrayed out of chronological order. It is often used to mimic the structure and recall of human memory
Memory
In psychology, memory is an organism's ability to store, retain, and recall information and experiences. Traditional studies of memory began in the fields of philosophy, including techniques of artificially enhancing memory....
but has been applied for other reasons as well.
Literature
Beginning a narrative in medias resIn medias res
In medias res or medias in res is a Latin phrase denoting the literary and artistic narrative technique wherein the relation of a story begins either at the mid-point or at the conclusion, rather than at the beginning In medias res or medias in res (into the middle of things) is a Latin phrase...
(Latin: "into the middle of things") began in ancient times as an oral tradition and was established as a convention of epic poetry
Epic poetry
An epic is a lengthy narrative poem, ordinarily concerning a serious subject containing details of heroic deeds and events significant to a culture or nation. Oral poetry may qualify as an epic, and Albert Lord and Milman Parry have argued that classical epics were fundamentally an oral poetic form...
with Homer
Homer
In the Western classical tradition Homer , is the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, and is revered as the greatest ancient Greek epic poet. These epics lie at the beginning of the Western canon of literature, and have had an enormous influence on the history of literature.When he lived is...
's Iliad
Iliad
The Iliad is an epic poem in dactylic hexameters, traditionally attributed to Homer. Set during the Trojan War, the ten-year siege of the city of Troy by a coalition of Greek states, it tells of the battles and events during the weeks of a quarrel between King Agamemnon and the warrior Achilles...
in the 8th century BC. The technique of narrating most of the story in flashback
Flashback (narrative)
Flashback is an interjected scene that takes the narrative back in time from the current point the story has reached. Flashbacks are often used to recount events that happened before the story’s primary sequence of events or to fill in crucial backstory...
also dates back to the Indian epic
Indian epic poetry
Indian epic poetry is the epic poetry written in the Indian subcontinent, traditionally called Kavya . The Ramayana and Mahabharata, originally composed in Sanskrit and translated thereafter into many other Indian languages, are some of the oldest surviving epic poems on earth and form part of...
, the Mahabharata
Mahabharata
The Mahabharata is one of the two major Sanskrit epics of ancient India and Nepal, the other being the Ramayana. The epic is part of itihasa....
, around the 5th century BC. Several medieval Arabian Nights tales such as "Sinbad the Sailor
Sinbad the Sailor
Sinbad the Sailor is a fictional sailor from Basrah, living during the Abbasid Caliphate – the hero of a story-cycle of Middle Eastern origin...
", "The City of Brass" and "The Three Apples" also had nonlinear narratives employing the in medias res and flashback techniques.
From the late 19th century and early 20th century, modernist
Modernist literature
Modernist literature is sub-genre of Modernism, a predominantly European movement beginning in the early 20th century that was characterized by a self-conscious break with traditional aesthetic forms...
novelists Joseph Conrad
Joseph Conrad
Joseph Conrad was a Polish-born English novelist.Conrad is regarded as one of the great novelists in English, although he did not speak the language fluently until he was in his twenties...
, Virginia Woolf
Virginia Woolf
Adeline Virginia Woolf was an English author, essayist, publisher, and writer of short stories, regarded as one of the foremost modernist literary figures of the twentieth century....
, Ford Madox Ford
Ford Madox Ford
Ford Madox Ford was an English novelist, poet, critic and editor whose journals, The English Review and The Transatlantic Review, were instrumental in the development of early 20th-century English literature...
, Marcel Proust
Marcel Proust
Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust was a French novelist, critic, and essayist best known for his monumental À la recherche du temps perdu...
, and William Faulkner
William Faulkner
William Cuthbert Faulkner was an American writer from Oxford, Mississippi. Faulkner worked in a variety of media; he wrote novels, short stories, a play, poetry, essays and screenplays during his career...
experimented with narrative chronology and abandoning linear order.
Examples of nonlinear novels are: Luís Vaz de Camões's The Lusiads, Laurence Sterne
Laurence Sterne
Laurence Sterne was an Irish novelist and an Anglican clergyman. He is best known for his novels The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, and A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy; but he also published many sermons, wrote memoirs, and was involved in local politics...
's The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman
The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman
The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman is a novel by Laurence Sterne. It was published in nine volumes, the first two appearing in 1759, and seven others following over the next 10 years....
(1759–67), Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle was a Scottish satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher during the Victorian era.He called economics "the dismal science", wrote articles for the Edinburgh Encyclopedia, and became a controversial social commentator.Coming from a strict Calvinist family, Carlyle was...
's Sartor Resartus
Sartor Resartus
Thomas Carlyle's major work, Sartor Resartus , first published as a serial in 1833-34, purported to be a commentary on the thought and early life of a German philosopher called Diogenes Teufelsdröckh , author of a tome entitled "Clothes: their Origin and Influence" , but was actually a poioumenon...
(ca. 1833), Emily Brontë
Emily Brontë
Emily Jane Brontë 30 July 1818 – 19 December 1848) was an English novelist and poet, best remembered for her only novel, Wuthering Heights, now considered a classic of English literature. Emily was the third eldest of the four surviving Brontë siblings, between the youngest Anne and her brother...
's Wuthering Heights
Wuthering Heights
Wuthering Heights is a novel by Emily Brontë published in 1847. It was her only novel and written between December 1845 and July 1846. It remained unpublished until July 1847 and was not printed until December after the success of her sister Charlotte Brontë's novel Jane Eyre...
(1847), James Joyce's
James Joyce
James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was an Irish novelist and poet, considered to be one of the most influential writers in the modernist avant-garde of the early 20th century...
Ulysses
Ulysses (novel)
Ulysses is a novel by the Irish author James Joyce. It was first serialised in parts in the American journal The Little Review from March 1918 to December 1920, and then published in its entirety by Sylvia Beach on 2 February 1922, in Paris. One of the most important works of Modernist literature,...
(1922) and Finnegans Wake
Finnegans Wake
Finnegans Wake is a novel by Irish author James Joyce, significant for its experimental style and resulting reputation as one of the most difficult works of fiction in the English language. Written in Paris over a period of seventeen years, and published in 1939, two years before the author's...
(1939), Sadeq Hedayat's The Blind Owl
The Blind Owl
The Blind Owl is Sadegh Hedayat's most enduring work of prose and a major literary work of 20th century Iran. Written in Persian, it tells the story of an unnamed pen case painter, the narrator, who sees in his macabre, feverish nightmares that "the presence of death annihilates all that is...
(1937), William S. Burroughs'
William S. Burroughs
William Seward Burroughs II was an American novelist, poet, essayist and spoken word performer. A primary figure of the Beat Generation and a major postmodernist author, he is considered to be "one of the most politically trenchant, culturally influential, and innovative artists of the 20th...
Naked Lunch
Naked Lunch
Naked Lunch is a novel by William S. Burroughs originally published in 1959. The book is structured as a series of loosely-connected vignettes. Burroughs stated that the chapters are intended to be read in any order...
(1959), Joseph Heller
Joseph Heller
Joseph Heller was a US satirical novelist, short story writer, and playwright. His best known work is Catch-22, a novel about US servicemen during World War II...
's Catch-22
Catch-22
Catch-22 is a satirical, historical novel by the American author Joseph Heller. He began writing it in 1953, and the novel was first published in 1961. It is set during World War II in 1943 and is frequently cited as one of the great literary works of the twentieth century...
(1961), Muriel Spark
Muriel Spark
Dame Muriel Spark, DBE was an award-winning Scottish novelist. In 2008 The Times newspaper named Spark in its list of "the 50 greatest British writers since 1945".-Early life:...
's The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1961), Kurt Vonnegut's
Kurt Vonnegut
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. was a 20th century American writer. His works such as Cat's Cradle , Slaughterhouse-Five and Breakfast of Champions blend satire, gallows humor and science fiction. He was known for his humanist beliefs and was honorary president of the American Humanist Association.-Early...
Slaughterhouse-Five
Slaughterhouse-Five
Slaughterhouse-Five, or The Children's Crusade: A Duty-Dance with Death is a satirical novel by Kurt Vonnegut about World War II experiences and journeys through time of a soldier called Billy Pilgrim...
(1969), Milorad Pavić's
Milorad Pavic (writer)
Milorad Pavić was a Serbian poet, prose writer, translator, and literary historian. He was also a candidate for Nobel Prize in Literature....
Dictionary of the Khazars
Dictionary of the Khazars
Dictionary of the Khazars: A Lexicon Novel is the first novel by Serbian writer Milorad Pavić, published in 1984. Originally written in Serbian, the novel has been translated into many languages...
(1988), Irvine Welsh
Irvine Welsh
Irvine Welsh is a contemporary Scottish novelist, best known for his novel Trainspotting. His work is characterised by raw Scottish dialect, and brutal depiction of the realities of Edinburgh life...
's Trainspotting
Trainspotting (novel)
Trainspotting is the first novel by Scottish writer Irvine Welsh. It is written in the form of short chapters narrated in the first person by various residents of Leith, Edinburgh, who either use heroin, are friends of the core group of heroin users, or engage in destructive activities that are...
(1993), Carole Maso
Carole Maso
Carole Maso is a contemporary American novelist and essayist, known for her experimental, poetic and fragmentary narratives often called postmodern. She received a B.A. in English from Vassar College in 1977. She is the recipient of a Lannan Literary Fellowship for Fiction, an NEA fellowship, and...
's Ava: a novel (1993) and Tim O'Brien
Tim O'Brien
Tim O'Brien may refer to:* Tim O'Brien , American author* Timothy O'Brien , Irish professor* Timothy L...
's Going After Cacciato
Going After Cacciato
Going After Cacciato is a war novel written by author Tim O'Brien and winner of the National Book Award for fiction in 1979. This complex novel is set during the Vietnam War and is told from the point of view of the protagonist, Paul Berlin...
(1979).
Scott McCloud
Scott McCloud
Scott McCloud is an American cartoonist and theorist on comics as a distinct literary and artistic medium...
argues in Understanding Comics
Understanding Comics
Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art is a 215-page non-fiction comic book, written and drawn by Scott McCloud and originally published in 1993. It explores the definition of comics, the historical development of the medium, its fundamental vocabulary, and various ways in which these elements...
that the narration of comics is nonlinear because it relies on the reader's choices and interactions.
Film
Defining nonlinear structure in film is, at times, difficult. Films may use extensive flashbackFlashback (narrative)
Flashback is an interjected scene that takes the narrative back in time from the current point the story has reached. Flashbacks are often used to recount events that happened before the story’s primary sequence of events or to fill in crucial backstory...
s or flashforward
Flashforward
A flashforward is an interjected scene that takes the narrative forward in time from the current point of the story in literature, film, television and other media. Flashforwards are often used to represent events expected, projected, or imagined to occur in the future...
s within a linear storyline, while nonlinear films often contain linear sequences. Orson Welles'
Orson Welles
George Orson Welles , best known as Orson Welles, was an American film director, actor, theatre director, screenwriter, and producer, who worked extensively in film, theatre, television and radio...
Citizen Kane
Citizen Kane
Citizen Kane is a 1941 American drama film, directed by and starring Orson Welles. Many critics consider it the greatest American film of all time, especially for its innovative cinematography, music and narrative structure. Citizen Kane was Welles' first feature film...
(1941) — influenced structurally by The Power and the Glory (1933) — and Akira Kurosawa
Akira Kurosawa
was a Japanese film director, producer, screenwriter and editor. Regarded as one of the most important and influential filmmakers in the history of cinema, Kurosawa directed 30 filmsIn 1946, Kurosawa co-directed, with Hideo Sekigawa and Kajiro Yamamoto, the feature Those Who Make Tomorrow ;...
's Rashomon
Rashomon (film)
The bandit's storyTajōmaru, a notorious brigand , claims that he tricked the samurai to step off the mountain trail with him and look at a cache of ancient swords he discovered. In the grove he tied the samurai to a tree, then brought the woman there. She initially tried to defend herself with a...
(1950) use a non-chronological flashback narrative that is often labeled nonlinear.
Silent and early era
Experimentation with nonlinear structure in film dates back to the silent filmSilent film
A silent film is a film with no synchronized recorded sound, especially with no spoken dialogue. In silent films for entertainment the dialogue is transmitted through muted gestures, pantomime and title cards...
era, including D.W. Griffith's Intolerance
Intolerance (film)
Intolerance is a 1916 American silent film directed by D. W. Griffith and is considered one of the great masterpieces of the Silent Era. The three-and-a-half hour epic intercuts four parallel storylines each separated by several centuries: A contemporary melodrama of crime and redemption; a...
(1916) and Abel Gance
Abel Gance
Abel Gance was a French film director and producer, writer and actor. He is best known for three major silent films: J'accuse , La Roue , and the monumental Napoléon .-Early life:...
's Napoléon (1927). Nonlinear film emerged from the French avant-garde
Avant-garde
Avant-garde means "advance guard" or "vanguard". The adjective form is used in English to refer to people or works that are experimental or innovative, particularly with respect to art, culture, and politics....
in 1929 with Luis Buñuel
Luis Buñuel
Luis Buñuel Portolés was a Spanish-born filmmaker — later a naturalized citizen of Mexico — who worked in Spain, Mexico, France and the US..-Early years:...
and Salvador Dalí
Salvador Dalí
Salvador Domènec Felip Jacint Dalí i Domènech, Marquis de Púbol , commonly known as Salvador Dalí , was a prominent Spanish Catalan surrealist painter born in Figueres,Spain....
's Un Chien Andalou
Un chien andalou
Un Chien Andalou is a 1929 silent surrealist short film by the Spanish director Luis Buñuel and artist Salvador Dalí. It was Buñuel's first film and was initially released in 1929 to a limited showing in Paris, but became popular and ran for eight months....
(English: An Andalusian Dog). The surrealist film jumps into fantasy and juxtaposes images, granting the filmmakers an ability to create statements about the Church, art, and society that are left open to interpretation. Buñuel and Dali's L'Âge d'Or
L'Âge d'Or
L'Âge d'or is a 1930 surrealist film directed by Spanish filmmaker Luis Buñuel and written by him and Salvador Dalí.The film began as a second collaboration with Dalí, but, by the time the film went into production, Buñuel and Dalí had had a falling-out, and so Dalí actually had nothing to do with...
(1930) (English: The Golden Age) also uses nonlinear concepts. The revolutionary Russian filmmakers Sergei Eisenstein
Sergei Eisenstein
Sergei Mikhailovich Eisenstein , né Eizenshtein, was a pioneering Soviet Russian film director and film theorist, often considered to be the "Father of Montage"...
, Vsevolod Pudovkin
Vsevolod Pudovkin
Vsevolod Illarionovich Pudovkin was a Russian and Soviet film director, screenwriter and actor who developed influential theories of montage...
, and Alexander Dovzhenko
Alexander Dovzhenko
Aleksandr Petrovich Dovzhenko , was a Soviet screenwriter, film producer and director of Ukrainian descent. He is often cited as one of the most important early Soviet filmmakers, alongside Sergei Eisenstein and Vsevolod Pudovkin.- Biography :...
also experimented with the possibilities of nonlinearity. Eisenstein's Strike
Strike (film)
Strike is a 1925 silent film made in the Soviet Union by Sergei Eisenstein. It was Eisenstein's first full-length feature film, and he would go on to make The Battleship Potemkin later that year. It was acted by the Proletcult Theatre, and composed of six parts...
(1925) and Dovzhenko's Earth
Earth (1930 film)
Earth is a 1930 Soviet film by Ukrainian director Alexander Dovzhenko, concerning an insurrection by a community of farmers, following a hostile takeover by Kulak landowners...
(1930) hint at a nonlinear experience. English director Humphrey Jennings
Humphrey Jennings
Frank Humphrey Sinkler Jennings was an English documentary filmmaker and one of the founders of the Mass Observation organization...
used a nonlinear approach in his World War II documentary Listen to Britain (1942).
Post-World War II
Jean-Luc GodardJean-Luc Godard
Jean-Luc Godard is a French-Swiss film director, screenwriter and film critic. He is often identified with the 1960s French film movement, French Nouvelle Vague, or "New Wave"....
's work since 1959 was also important in the evolution of nonlinear film. Godard famously stated, "I agree that a film should have a beginning, a middle and an end but not necessarily in that order". Godard's Week End (French: Le weekend) (1968), as well as Andy Warhol
Andy Warhol
Andrew Warhola , known as Andy Warhol, was an American painter, printmaker, and filmmaker who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art...
's Chelsea Girls
Chelsea Girls
Chelsea Girls is a 1966 experimental underground film directed by Andy Warhol and Paul Morrissey. The film was Warhol's first major commercial success after a long line of avant-garde art films...
(1966), defy linear structure in exchange for a chronology of events that is seemingly random. Alain Resnais
Alain Resnais
Alain Resnais is a French film director whose career has extended over more than six decades. After training as a film editor in the mid-1940s, he went on to direct a number of short films which included Nuit et Brouillard , an influential documentary about the Nazi concentration camps.He began...
experimented with narrative and time in his films Hiroshima Mon Amour
Hiroshima Mon Amour
Hiroshima mon amour is an acclaimed 1959 drama film directed by French film director Alain Resnais, with a screenplay by Marguerite Duras. It is the documentation of an intensely personal conversation between a French-Japanese couple about memory and forgetfulness...
(1959), Last Year at Marienbad
Last Year at Marienbad
L'Année dernière à Marienbad is a 1961 French film directed by Alain Resnais from a screenplay by Alain Robbe-Grillet....
(1961), and Muriel
Muriel (film)
Muriel is a 1963 French film directed by Alain Resnais. It was Resnais's third feature film, following Hiroshima mon amour and L'Année dernière à Marienbad , and in common with those films it explores the challenge of integrating a remembered or imagined past with the life of the present...
(1963). Federico Fellini
Federico Fellini
Federico Fellini, Cavaliere di Gran Croce OMRI , was an Italian film director and scriptwriter. Known for a distinct style that blends fantasy and baroque images, he is considered one of the most influential and widely revered filmmakers of the 20th century...
defined his own nonlinear cinema with the films La strada
La Strada (film)
La Strada is a 1954 Italian neorealist drama directed by Federico Fellini in which a naïve young woman is sold to a brutish man and goes on the road as a part of his itinerant show....
(1954), La dolce vita (1960), 8½
8½
8½ is a 1963 Italian fantasy film directed by Federico Fellini. Co-scripted by Fellini, Tullio Pinelli, Ennio Flaiano, and Brunello Rondi, it stars Marcello Mastroianni as Guido Anselmi, a famous Italian film director...
(1963), Satyricon
Satyricon (film)
Satyricon is a 1969 Italian fantasy drama film written and directed by Federico Fellini. It is loosely based on Petronius's work, Satyricon, a series of bawdy and satirical episodes written during the reign of the emperor Nero and set in imperial Rome.-Plot:The film opens on a graffiti-covered...
(1969), and Roma
Roma (1972 film)
Roma, also known as Fellini's Roma, is a 1972 semi-autobiographical, poetic film depicting director Federico Fellini's move from his native Rimini to Rome as a youth. It is formed by a series of loosely connected episodes. The plot is minimal, and the only character to develop significantly is...
(1972). Nicolas Roeg
Nicolas Roeg
Nicolas Jack Roeg, CBE, BSC is an English film director and cinematographer.-Life and career:Roeg was born in London, the son of Mabel Gertrude and Jack Nicolas Roeg...
's films, including Performance
Performance (film)
Performance is a 1968 British crime drama film; the film was produced in 1968 but not released until 1970. Directed by Donald Cammell and Nicolas Roeg, Performance stars James Fox and Mick Jagger of The Rolling Stones in his film acting debut.-Plot:...
(1968), Walkabout
Walkabout (film)
Walkabout is a 1971 film set in Australia, directed by Nicolas Roeg and starring Jenny Agutter, Luc Roeg and David Gulpilil. Edward Bond wrote the screenplay, which is loosely based on the novel Walkabout by James Vance Marshall...
(1971), Don't Look Now
Don't Look Now
Don't Look Now is a 1973 thriller film directed by Nicolas Roeg. Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland star as a married couple whose lives become complicated after meeting two elderly sisters in Venice, one of whom claims to be clairvoyant and informs them that their recently deceased daughter is...
(1973), The Man Who Fell to Earth
The Man Who Fell to Earth (film)
The Man Who Fell to Earth is a 1976 British science fiction film directed by Nicolas Roeg.The film is based on the 1963 novel of the same name by Walter Tevis, about an extraterrestrial who crash lands on Earth seeking a way to ship water to his planet, which is suffering from a severe drought...
(1976), and Bad Timing
Bad Timing
Bad Timing is a 1980 British film directed by Nicolas Roeg, produced by Jeremy Thomas.-Plot:In Vienna, a young American woman in her twenties is rushed to the emergency room after apparently overdosing. With her is Alex Linden, an American psychiatrist teaching in Vienna...
(1980) are characterized by a nonlinear approach. Other experimental nonlinear filmmakers include Michelangelo Antonioni
Michelangelo Antonioni
Michelangelo Antonioni, Cavaliere di Gran Croce OMRI was an Italian modernist film director, screenwriter, editor and short story writer.- Personal life :...
, Peter Greenaway
Peter Greenaway
Peter Greenaway, CBE is a British film director. His films are noted for the distinct influence of Renaissance and Baroque painting, and Flemish painting in particular...
, Chris Marker
Chris Marker
Chris Marker is a French writer, photographer, documentary film director, multimedia artist and film essayist. His best known films are La jetée , A Grin Without a Cat , Sans Soleil and AK , an essay film on the Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa...
, Agnès Varda
Agnès Varda
Agnès Varda is a French film director and professor at the European Graduate School. Her movies, photographs, and art installations focus on documentary realism, feminist issues, and social commentary — with a distinct experimental style....
, and Raúl Ruiz.
In the United States, Robert Altman
Robert Altman
Robert Bernard Altman was an American film director and screenwriter known for making films that are highly naturalistic, but with a stylized perspective. In 2006, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences recognized his body of work with an Academy Honorary Award.His films MASH , McCabe and...
carried the nonlinear motif in his films, including McCabe & Mrs. Miller
McCabe & Mrs. Miller
McCabe & Mrs. Miller is a 1971 American Western film starring Warren Beatty and Julie Christie, and directed by Robert Altman. The screenplay is by Altman and Brian McKay from the novel McCabe by Edmund Naughton. The cinematography is by Vilmos Zsigmond and the soundtrack includes three songs by...
(1971), Nashville (1975), The Player
The Player
The Player is a 1992 American satirical film directed by Robert Altman from a screenplay by Michael Tolkin based on his own 1988 novel of the same name....
(1992), Short Cuts
Short Cuts
Short Cuts is a 1993 American drama film directed by Robert Altman. Filmed from a screenplay by Robert Altman and Frank Barhydt, it is inspired by nine short stories and a poem by Raymond Carver...
(1993), and Gosford Park
Gosford Park
Gosford Park is a 2001 British-American mystery comedy-drama film directed by Robert Altman and written by Julian Fellowes. The film stars an ensemble cast, which includes Helen Mirren, Maggie Smith, Eileen Atkins, Alan Bates, and Michael Gambon...
(2001). Woody Allen
Woody Allen
Woody Allen is an American screenwriter, director, actor, comedian, jazz musician, author, and playwright. Allen's films draw heavily on literature, sexuality, philosophy, psychology, Jewish identity, and the history of cinema...
embraced the experimental nature of nonlinear narrative in Annie Hall
Annie Hall
Annie Hall is a 1977 American romantic comedy directed by Woody Allen from a screenplay co-written with Marshall Brickman and co-starring Diane Keaton. One of Allen's most popular and most honored films, it won four Academy Awards including Best Picture...
(1977), Interiors
Interiors
Interiors is a 1978 drama film written and directed by Woody Allen. Featured performers are Kristin Griffith, Mary Beth Hurt, Richard Jordan, Diane Keaton, E. G. Marshall, Geraldine Page, Maureen Stapleton and Sam Waterston....
(1978), and Stardust Memories
Stardust Memories
Stardust Memories is a 1980 film written and directed by Woody Allen, who considers this to be one of his best films in addition to The Purple Rose of Cairo and Match Point. The film is shot in black-and-white, particularly reminiscent of Federico Fellini's 8½ , which it parodies...
(1980).
1990s and 2000s
In the 1990s, Quentin TarantinoQuentin Tarantino
Quentin Jerome Tarantino is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, cinematographer and actor. In the early 1990s, he began his career as an independent filmmaker with films employing nonlinear storylines and the aestheticization of violence...
influenced a tremendous growth in nonlinear films with Pulp Fiction
Pulp Fiction (film)
Pulp Fiction is a 1994 American crime film directed by Quentin Tarantino, who co-wrote its screenplay with Roger Avary. The film is known for its rich, eclectic dialogue, ironic mix of humor and violence, nonlinear storyline, and host of cinematic allusions and pop culture references...
(1994). Other important nonlinear films include Atom Egoyan
Atom Egoyan
Atom Egoyan, OC is a critically acclaimed Armenian-Canadian stage director and film director. Egoyan made his career breakthrough with Exotica...
's Exotica
Exotica (film)
Exotica is a 1994 Canadian film set primarily in and around the Exotica strip club in Toronto, Canada. It was written and directed by Atom Egoyan. Music used includes "Montagues and Capulets".-Synopsis:...
(1994), Terrence Malick
Terrence Malick
Terrence Frederick Malick is a U.S. film director, screenwriter, and producer. In a career spanning almost four decades, Malick has directed five feature films....
's The Thin Red Line
The Thin Red Line (1998 film)
The Thin Red Line is a 1998 American war film which tells a fictional story of United States forces during the Battle of Mount Austen in World War II. It portrays men in: C Company, 1st Battalion, 27th Infantry Regiment, 25th Infantry Division; in particular those soldiers played by Sean Penn, Jim...
(1998), Paul Thomas Anderson
Paul Thomas Anderson
Paul Thomas Anderson is an American film director, screenwriter, and producer. He has written and directed five feature films: Hard Eight , Boogie Nights , Magnolia , Punch-Drunk Love and There Will Be Blood...
's Magnolia
Magnolia (film)
Magnolia is a 1999 American drama film written, produced, and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, narrated by Ricky Jay, and starring Tom Cruise, Philip Baker Hall, Philip Seymour Hoffman, William H. Macy, Julianne Moore, John C. Reilly, and Jason Robards in his last feature film appearance...
(1999), and Karen and Jill Sprecher
Jill Sprecher
-Biography:A graduate from University of Wisconsin–Madison with a degree in philosophy and literature, Sprecher relocated to New York to study film....
's Thirteen Conversations About One Thing
Thirteen Conversations About One Thing
Thirteen Conversations About One Thing is a 2001 American drama film directed by Jill Sprecher. The screenplay by Sprecher and her sister Karen focuses on five seemingly disparate individuals in search of happiness whose paths intersect in ways that unexpectedly impact their lives.-Plot:The film is...
(2001). David Lynch
David Lynch
David Keith Lynch is an American filmmaker, television director, visual artist, musician and occasional actor. Known for his surrealist films, he has developed his own unique cinematic style, which has been dubbed "Lynchian", and which is characterized by its dream imagery and meticulous sound...
experimented with nonlinear narrative and surrealism
Surrealism
Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members....
in Lost Highway (1997), Mulholland Dr.
Mulholland Drive (film)
Mulholland Drive is a 2001 American neo-noir psychological thriller written and directed by David Lynch, starring Justin Theroux, Naomi Watts, and Laura Harring. The surrealist film was highly acclaimed by many critics and earned Lynch the Prix de la mise en scène at the 2001 Cannes Film Festival...
(2001), and Inland Empire
Inland Empire (film)
Inland Empire, sometimes styled as INLAND EMPIRE, is a 2006 mystery film written and directed by David Lynch. It was his first feature-length film since 2001's Mulholland Drive, and shares many similarities with that film. It premiered in Italy at the Venice Film Festival on September 6, 2006...
(2006).
In the years leading into and the beginning of the 21st century, some filmmakers have returned to the use of nonlinear narrative repeatedly, including Steven Soderbergh
Steven Soderbergh
Steven Andrew Soderbergh is an American film producer, screenwriter, cinematographer, editor, and an Academy Award-winning film director. He is best known for directing commercial Hollywood films like Erin Brockovich, Traffic, and the remake of Ocean's Eleven, but he has also directed smaller less...
in Schizopolis
Schizopolis
Schizopolis is an experimental comedy film directed by Steven Soderbergh in 1996 with a non-linear narrative.-Synopsis:...
(1996), Out of Sight
Out of Sight
Out of Sight is a 1998 American crime film. The film was directed by Steven Soderbergh and based on the novel of the same name by Elmore Leonard. It was the first of several collaborations between Soderbergh and star George Clooney. The film was released on June 26, 1998. It was nominated for two...
(1998), The Limey
The Limey
The Limey is a 1999 American crime film, directed by Steven Soderbergh and written by Lem Dobbs. The film features Terence Stamp, Lesley Ann Warren, Luis Guzmán, Peter Fonda and Barry Newman.Filming locations included Big Sur and L.A.-Plot:...
(1999), Full Frontal
Full Frontal (film)
Full Frontal is a 2002 film by Steven Soderbergh, about a day in the life of people in Hollywood. The film, starring Catherine Keener, David Duchovny, Julia Roberts, Mary McCormack and David Hyde Pierce was shot on digital video in under a month using the Canon XL-1s...
(2002), Solaris
Solaris (2002 film)
Solaris is a 2002 science fiction film and psychological drama directed by Steven Soderbergh and starring George Clooney and Natascha McElhone...
(2002), and Che
Che (film)
Che is a two-part 2008 biopic about Ernesto 'Che' Guevara directed by Steven Soderbergh and starring Benicio del Toro. Rather than follow a standard chronological order, the films offer an oblique series of interspersed moments along the overall timeline...
(2008); Christopher Nolan
Christopher Nolan
Christopher Jonathan James Nolan is a British-American film director, screenwriter and producer.He received serious notice after his second feature Memento , which he wrote and directed based on a story idea by his brother, Jonathan Nolan. Jonathan went to co-write later scripts with him,...
in Following (1998), Memento (2001), The Prestige
The Prestige (film)
The Prestige is a 2006 mystery thriller film written, directed and co-produced by Christopher Nolan, with a screenplay adapted from Christopher Priest's 1995 novel of the same name. The story follows Robert Angier and Alfred Borden, rival stage magicians in London at the end of the 19th century...
(2006), and Inception
Inception
Inception: The Subconscious Jams 1994-1995 is a compilation of unreleased tracks by the band Download.-Track listing:# "Primitive Tekno Jam" – 3:23# "Bee Sting Sickness" – 8:04# "Weed Acid Techno" – 8:19...
(2010). Memento, with its fragmentation and reverse chronology
Reverse chronology
Reverse chronology is a method of story-telling whereby the plot is revealed in reverse order.In a story employing this technique, the first scene shown is actually the conclusion to the plot...
, has been described as characteristic of moving towards postmodernism
Postmodernism
Postmodernism is a philosophical movement evolved in reaction to modernism, the tendency in contemporary culture to accept only objective truth and to be inherently suspicious towards a global cultural narrative or meta-narrative. Postmodernist thought is an intentional departure from the...
in contemporary cinema. Richard Linklater
Richard Linklater
-Early life:Linklater was born in Houston, Texas. He studied at Sam Houston State University and left midway through his stint in college to work on an off-shore oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico. While working on the rig he read a lot of literature, but on land he developed a love of film through...
used nonlinear narrative in Slacker
Slacker (film)
Slacker is an American independent film written and directed by Richard Linklater, who also appears in the film. Slacker was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize - Dramatic at the Sundance Film Festival in 1991.-Plot summary:...
(1991), Waking Life
Waking Life
Waking Life is an American animated film , directed by Richard Linklater and released in 2001. The entire film was shot using digital video and then a team of artists using computers drew stylized lines and colors over each frame.The film focuses on the nature of dreams, consciousness, and...
(2001), and A Scanner Darkly
A Scanner Darkly (film)
A Scanner Darkly is a 2006 science fiction thriller directed by Richard Linklater based on the novel of the same name by Philip K. Dick. The film tells the story of identity and deception in a near-future dystopia constantly under intrusive high-technology police surveillance in the midst of a drug...
(2006); Gus Van Sant
Gus Van Sant
Gus Green Van Sant, Jr. is an American director, screenwriter, painter, photographer, musician, and author. He is a two time nominee of the Academy Award for Best Director for his 1997 film Good Will Hunting and his 2008 film Milk, both of which were also nominated for Best Picture, and won the...
in Elephant (2003), Last Days
Last Days (film)
Last Days is a 2005 American film directed, produced, and written by Gus Van Sant, and is a fictionalized account of the last days of Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain. It was released to theaters in the United States on July 22, 2005, and was produced by HBO. The film stars Michael Pitt as the...
(2005), and Paranoid Park
Paranoid Park (film)
Paranoid Park is a 2007 American drama film written and directed by Gus Van Sant. The film is based on the novel of the same name by Blake Nelson and takes place in Portland, Oregon. It stars Gabe Nevins as a teenage skateboarder who accidentally kills a security guard.Van Sant wrote the draft...
(2007). Hong Kong auteur Wong Kar-wai
Wong Kar-wai
Wong Kar-wai BBS is a Hong Kong Second Wave filmmaker, internationally renowned as an auteur for his visually unique, highly stylized, emotionally resonant work, including Days of Being Wild , Ashes of Time , Chungking Express , Fallen Angels , Happy Together and 2046...
explored nonlinear storylines in the films Days of Being Wild
Days of Being Wild
Days of Being Wild is a 1990 Hong Kong film directed by Wong Kar-wai. The film stars some of the best-known actors and actresses in Hong Kong, including Leslie Cheung, Carina Lau, Maggie Cheung, Jacky Cheung and Andy Lau. Tony Leung Chiu Wai also appears in a silent cameo role lasting several...
(1991), Ashes of Time
Ashes of Time
-Critical:When the film opened in Hong Kong it received mixed reviews. Critics found it so elliptical that it was almost impossible to make out any semblance of a plot, something very rare in a wuxia film....
(1994), Chungking Express
Chungking Express
Chungking Express is a 1994 Hong Kong film written and directed by Wong Kar-wai. The film consists of two stories told in sequence, each about a lovesick Hong Kong policeman mulling over his relationship with a woman...
(1994), In the Mood for Love
In the Mood for Love
In the Mood for Love is a 2000 Hong Kong film directed by Wong Kar-wai, starring Maggie Cheung and Tony Leung...
(2000), and 2046
2046 (film)
2046 is a 2004 Hong Kong film written and directed by Wong Kar-wai. It is a loose sequel to the 1991 Hong Kong film Days of Being Wild and the 2000 Hong Kong film In the Mood for Love...
(2004). Fernando Meirelles
Fernando Meirelles
Fernando Ferreira Meirelles is a Brazilian film director, producer and screenwriter.He was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Director in 2004 for his work in the Brazilian film City of God, released in 2002 in Brazil and in 2003 in the U.S. by Miramax Films...
in City of God and The Constant Gardener
The Constant Gardener (film)
The Constant Gardener is a 2005 drama film directed by Fernando Meirelles. The screenplay by Jeffrey Caine is based on the John le Carré novel of the same name. It tells the story of Justin Quayle, a man who seeks to find the motivating forces behind his wife's murder.The film stars Ralph Fiennes,...
. All of Alejandro González Iñárritu
Alejandro González Iñárritu
Alejandro González Iñárritu is a Mexican film director.González Iñárritu is the first Mexican director to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Director and by the DGA of America for Best Director. He is also the first and only Mexican born director to have won the Prix de la mise en scene...
's films to date feature nonlinear narratives. Takashi Shimizu
Takashi Shimizu
Takashi Shimizu is a Japanese film director, best known for the Ju-on series of horror films.-Filmography:...
's Japanese horror series, Ju-on
Ju-on
is the title of a series of horror films by Japanese director Takashi Shimizu. Shimizu attended the Film School of Tokyo, where he studied under Kiyoshi Kurosawa. Kurosawa helped Shimizu shepherd the Ju-on projects to fruition.-History:...
, brought to America as The Grudge
The Grudge
The Grudge is the 2004 American remake of the Japanese film Ju-on: The Grudge, and the first horror film in the Ju-on series, Ju-on 1. The film is the first installment in the American horror film series The Grudge...
, is also nonlinear in its storytelling.
Television
Japanese animeAnime
is the Japanese abbreviated pronunciation of "animation". The definition sometimes changes depending on the context. In English-speaking countries, the term most commonly refers to Japanese animated cartoons....
series sometimes present their plot in nonlinear order. In The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, for example, the episodes were deliberately aired in non-chronological order. A more nonlinear example is Baccano!
Baccano!
is a Japanese light novel series written by Ryohgo Narita and illustrated by Katsumi Enami. The series, often told from multiple points of view, is mostly set within a fictional United States during various time periods, most notably the Prohibition-era. It focuses on various people, including...
, where every scene is displayed in non-chronological order, with most scenes taking place at various times during the early 1930s and some scenes taking place before (extending back to the 18th century) and after (extending forward to the 21st century). Other examples include Yami to Bōshi to Hon no Tabibito
Yami to Boshi to Hon no Tabibito
, also known as Yamibō/Yamibou for short, is a Japanese adult visual novel published in December 2002 by Root. A 13-episode anime series produced Studio Deen aired between October and December 2003...
, Touka Gettan, Rental Magica
Rental Magica
is a Japanese light novel series by Makoto Sanda, with illustrations by Pako. It is currently in the midst of serialization in The Sneaker magazine published by Kadokawa Shoten...
, Ergo Proxy
Ergo Proxy
is a science fiction suspense anime television series, produced by Manglobe, which premiered across Japan on 25 February 2006 on the WOWOW satellite network. It is directed by Shukō Murase, with screenplay by Dai Satō et al.. Ergo Proxy has been described as dark science fiction mystery with...
, Fullmetal Alchemist
Fullmetal Alchemist
, is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Hiromu Arakawa. The world of Fullmetal Alchemist is styled after the European Industrial Revolution...
and (partly) Boogiepop Phantom
Boogiepop Phantom
is a twelve episode anime television series produced by Madhouse Studios, based on the Boogiepop light novel series by Kouhei Kadono, particularly that of Boogiepop and Others and Boogiepop At Dawn...
.
The ABC
American Broadcasting Company
The American Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network. Created in 1943 from the former NBC Blue radio network, ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Company and is part of Disney-ABC Television Group. Its first broadcast on television was in 1948...
television series Lost
Lost (TV series)
Lost is an American television series that originally aired on ABC from September 22, 2004 to May 23, 2010, consisting of six seasons. Lost is a drama series that follows the survivors of the crash of a commercial passenger jet flying between Sydney and Los Angeles, on a mysterious tropical island...
makes extensive use of nonlinear story telling, with each episode typically featuring a primary storyline on the island as well as a secondary storyline from another point in a character's life, either past or future.
FX's Emmy Award
Emmy Award
An Emmy Award, often referred to simply as the Emmy, is a television production award, similar in nature to the Peabody Awards but more focused on entertainment, and is considered the television equivalent to the Academy Awards and the Grammy Awards .A majority of Emmys are presented in various...
winning legal drama Damages
Damages (TV series)
Damages is an American television drama series created by the writing and production trio of Daniel Zelman and brothers Glenn and Todd A. Kessler . It is broadcast in the United States on the DirecTV channel Audience Network after originally airing on FX and is produced by the creators' own...
starring Glenn Close
Glenn Close
Glenn Close is an American actress and singer of theatre and film, known for her roles as a femme fatale Glenn Close (born March 19, 1947) is an American actress and singer of theatre and film, known for her roles as a femme fatale Glenn Close (born March 19, 1947) is an American actress and...
, begins each season with an intensely melodramatic event taking place and then traveling back six months earlier. Throughout the season, each episode shows events both in the past, present, and future that lead up to and follow said event.
The English sitcom Coupling
Coupling (UK TV series)
Coupling is a British television sitcom written by Steven Moffat that aired on BBC2 from May 2000 to June 2004. Produced by Hartswood Films for the BBC, the show centres on the dating and sexual adventures and mishaps of six friends in their thirties, often depicting the three women and the three...
would often utilize non-linear narratives in which groups of men and women would independently discuss an event, after which (or during) the event would be portrayed.
Video games
In video games, the term nonlinear refers to a game that has more than one possible story line and/or ending. This allows the audience to choose from multiple different paths, that may be compatible with their style of play. This increases replay value, as players must often beat the game several times to get the entire story. Computer role-playing games, such as Fallout, often contain multiple paths which the player may choose from the beginning of the game. Multiple endings also appear in some console role-playing games (such as the Chrono and Star OceanStar Ocean
is a franchise of action role-playing video games developed by tri-Ace and published and owned by Square Enix .-Creation and influence:...
series), adventure game
Adventure game
An adventure game is a video game in which the player assumes the role of protagonist in an interactive story driven by exploration and puzzle-solving instead of physical challenge. The genre's focus on story allows it to draw heavily from other narrative-based media such as literature and film,...
s (such as Shadow of Memories
Shadow of Memories
, also known as Shadow of Destiny in North America, is an adventure video game developed by Konami Computer Entertainment Tokyo for the PlayStation 2. Originally released for the PlayStation 2, it was later ported to the PC and Xbox in 2002 by the now-defunct Runecraft company...
), survival horrors (such as the Resident Evil and Silent Hill
Silent Hill
is a survival horror video game series consisting of seven installments published by Konami and its subsidiary Konami Digital Entertainment. The first four games in the series, Silent Hill, Silent Hill 2, 3 and 4, have been developed by an internal factor, Team Silent...
games), stealth games (such as Metal Gear Solid
Metal Gear Solid
is a videogame by Hideo Kojima. The game was developed by Konami Computer Entertainment Japan and first published by Konami in 1998 for the PlayStation video game console. It is the sequel to Kojimas early MSX2 computer games Metal Gear and Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake...
) and platform game
Platform game
A platform game is a video game characterized by requiring the player to jump to and from suspended platforms or over obstacles . It must be possible to control these jumps and to fall from platforms or miss jumps...
s (such as Sega
Sega
, usually styled as SEGA, is a multinational video game software developer and an arcade software and hardware development company headquartered in Ōta, Tokyo, Japan, with various offices around the world...
's spin-off game, Shadow the Hedgehog
Shadow the Hedgehog
is a character from the Sonic the Hedgehog series. Shadow is an artificially-created life form. His trademark hover shoes propel him at extreme speeds that rival those of Sonic, and with a Chaos Emerald he has the ability to distort time and space using "Chaos Control." Often referred to as being...
).
Some video games mimic film non-linearity by presenting a single plot in a chronologically distorted way instead of letting the player determine the story flow themselves. The first-person shooter
First-person shooter
First-person shooter is a video game genre that centers the gameplay on gun and projectile weapon-based combat through first-person perspective; i.e., the player experiences the action through the eyes of a protagonist. Generally speaking, the first-person shooter shares common traits with other...
Tribes: Vengeance
Tribes: Vengeance
Tribes: Vengeance is a science fiction first-person shooter computer game of the Tribes video game series. It was developed by Irrational Games and released by Sierra Entertainment in October 2004...
is an example of this; another is Sega's Sonic Adventure
Sonic Adventure
is a 1999 platform video game developed by Sonic Team and released on December 23, 1998, in Japan by Sega for the Dreamcast. One of its development titles was Sonic RPG...
.
Oftentimes game developers use the idea of character amnesia in games. Character amnesia helps give a game a beginning because the audience only has the understanding that there is a preceding history before the events of the game take place. The character's amnesia allows the developers more leniency with what possibilities or paths the audience can potentially take. This option of choosing paths ultimately results in the development of a non-linear story. Furthermore by creating a nonlinear story line the complexity of game play is greatly expanded. As stated earlier, non-linear game play allows for greater replay value which allows the player to put together the different pieces of a potentially puzzling storyline. This idea of having a complex and deep storyline while the user has little or no prior knowledge of past events is clearly evident in games like Facade. In Facade the player is put into a situation that lasts approximately 10 to 15 minutes in real time yet the events recalled seem to have a basis in years of dramatic history.
HTML Narratives
In contemporary society webpages or to be more correct, hypertexts, have become affluent forms of narratives. Hypertexts have great potential to create non-linear forms of narratives. They allow for individuals to actually interact with the story through links, images, audio and video. An established hypertext narrative is Public Secret. Public Secret illustrates the reality of being incarcerated in California's Criminal Justice System. It brings to light the way inmates are treated. This functions as a non-linear narrative because it allows for its audience to witness through text and audio the reality of being a female inmate. However, there is no exact beginning or end as there are in comic books or video games. This website consists of multiple subtopics that do not force the audience to make their next selection based on what their previous experiences.See also
- Anachronistic
- ChronologyChronologyChronology is the science of arranging events in their order of occurrence in time, such as the use of a timeline or sequence of events. It is also "the determination of the actual temporal sequence of past events".Chronology is part of periodization...
- Experimental fiction
- Exponential time
- Fabula and sujet
- Hyperlink cinemaHyperlink cinemaHyperlink cinema is a term coined by author Alissa Quart, who used the term in her review of the film Happy Endings for the film journal Film Comment in 2005. Film critic Roger Ebert popularized the term when reviewing the film Syriana in 2005...
- Hypertext fictionHypertext fictionHypertext fiction is a genre of electronic literature, characterized by the use of hypertext links which provides a new context for non-linearity in "literature" and reader interaction. The reader typically chooses links to move from one node of text to the next, and in this fashion arranges a...
- List of cycles
- MetacognitionMetacognitionMetacognition is defined as "cognition about cognition", or "knowing about knowing." It can take many forms; it includes knowledge about when and how to use particular strategies for learning or for problem solving...
- MetafictionMetafictionMetafiction, also known as Romantic irony in the context of Romantic works of literature, is a type of fiction that self-consciously addresses the devices of fiction, exposing the fictional illusion...
- MS Paint AdventuresMS Paint AdventuresMS Paint Adventures is a collection of webcomics written and illustrated by Andrew Hussie. Because of the frequency with which the site is updated, MS Paint Adventures is estimated to be the longest web comic on the Internet with over 6000 pages total among its four series.These comics are written...
Nonlinear narrative films
- Sense of time
- SequenceSequenceIn mathematics, a sequence is an ordered list of objects . Like a set, it contains members , and the number of terms is called the length of the sequence. Unlike a set, order matters, and exactly the same elements can appear multiple times at different positions in the sequence...
- SpacetimeSpacetimeIn physics, spacetime is any mathematical model that combines space and time into a single continuum. Spacetime is usually interpreted with space as being three-dimensional and time playing the role of a fourth dimension that is of a different sort from the spatial dimensions...
- Stream of consciousness
- Time in physicsTime in physicsTime in physics is defined by its measurement: time is what a clock reads. It is a scalar quantity and, like length, mass, and charge, is usually described as a fundamental quantity. Time can be combined mathematically with other physical quantities to derive other concepts such as motion, kinetic...
- Wheel of timeWheel of timeThe Wheel of time or wheel of history is a concept found in several religious traditions and philosophies, notably religions of Indian origin such as Hinduism and Buddhism, which regard time as cyclical and consisting of repeating ages...
External links
- Non Linear Story Telling in THE TREE OF LIFE http://www.writeyourscreenplay.com/2011/06/28/the-tree-of-life-part-5-non-linear-storytelling-and-the-hegelian-dialectic/
- Interactive and Non-Linear Narrative: Theory and Practice, Spring 2004 MIT OpenCourseWareMIT OpenCourseWareMIT OpenCourseWare is an initiative of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to put all of the educational materials from its undergraduate- and graduate-level courses online, partly free and openly available to anyone, anywhere. MIT OpenCourseWare is a large-scale, web-based publication of...
. - Cowgill, Linda. Non-Linear Narratives: The In Time Travel
- Denby, David. "The New Disorder: Adventures in film narrative". March 5, 2007. The New YorkerThe New YorkerThe New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...
.