Reverse chronology
Encyclopedia
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. Once that scene ends, the penultimate scene is shown, and so on, so that the final scene the viewer sees is the first chronologically.
Many stories employ flashback
, showing prior events, but whereas the scene order of most conventional films is A-B-C-etc, a film in reverse chronology goes Z-Y-X-etc.
As a hypothetical example, if the fairy tale
Jack and the Beanstalk
was told using reverse chronology, the opening scene would depict Jack chopping the beanstalk down and killing the giant. The next scene would feature Jack being discovered by the giant and climbing down the beanstalk in fear of his life. Later, we would see Jack running into the man with the infamous magic beans, then, at the end of the film, being sent off by his mother to sell the cow.
, meaning he is unable to form new memories. The film parallels the protagonist's perspective by unfolding in reverse chronological order, leaving the audience as ignorant of the events that occurred prior to each scene (which, played in reverse chronological order, will not be revealed until later) as the protagonist is.
In the film Irréversible
, an act of homicidal
violence takes place at the start of the movie (i.e. it is the final event to take place). During the remainder of the film we learn not only that the violence is an act of vengeance, but what exactly is being avenged. The film was highly controversial for its graphic nature; had the scenes been shown in chronological order, this violent content would make it a simple, and pointlessly brutal, revenge movie. However, as it is, told in reverse, the audience is made to consider the exact consequences of each action, and there is often 'more than meets the eye'.
, written by Virgil
in the 1st century BC, uses reverse chronology within scenes. In "The Three Apples", a murder mystery
in the One Thousand and One Nights, the middle part of the story shows a flashback of events leading up to the discovery of a dead body at the beginning of the story. The action of W. R. Burnett's novel, Goodbye to the Past (1934), moves continually from 1929 to 1873. Edward Lewis Wallant
uses flashbacks in reverse chronology in The Human Season (1960). The pessimistic masterpiece Christopher Homm (1965), a novel by C. H. Sisson
, is also told in reverse chronology.
Philip K. Dick
, in his 1967 novel Counter-Clock World
, describes a future in which time has started to move in reverse, resulting in the dead reviving in their own graves ("old-birth"), living their lives in reverse, eventually ending in returning to the womb, and splitting into an egg and a sperm during copulation between a recipient woman and a man. The novel was expanded from Dick's short story Your Appointment Will Be Yesterday, first published in the August 1966 edition of Amazing Stories
.
Martin Amis
's novel "Time's Arrow
" (1991) tells the story of a man who, it seems, brings dead people to life. Eventually it is revealed that the story is being seen backwards, and he was a doctor at Auschwitz who brought death to live people. He escaped to America, and the novel starts with his death and ends with his birth. Amis writes in the Afterword that he had a "certain paragraph" from Kurt Vonnegut's
Slaughterhouse Five (1969), in mind. As he waits to be taken by aliens to the planet Tralfamadore, the protagonist, Billy Pilgrim, watches a war movie backwards. American planes full of holes fly backwards as German planes suck bullets from them; bombers take their bombs back to base where they are returned to the States, reduced to ore and buried. The American fliers became high school kids again, and, Billy guesses, Hitler ultimately returns to babyhood.
Iain Banks's novel Use of Weapons
interweaves two parallel stories, one told in standard chronology and one in reverse.
have employed this technique. George S. Kaufman
and Moss Hart's
1934 play, Merrily We Roll Along
, is told in reverse order, as is the Harold Pinter
play Betrayal
(1978).
's La glace à trois faces (The Three Sided Mirror) features a sequence where the events happen in reverse, beginning with the protagonist's exit from a room until the viewer sees the entrance. Pinter's play was made into a film in 1983; this was the first important film set in reverse chronology, though it was preceded by the Czech comedy Happy End, (1968), a farce which starts with a guillotined man finding his head popped back on his shoulders and ends with him as a new-born being pushed back into his mother's womb. The technique was later employed in Peppermint Candy
(2000), by South Korean director Lee Chang-dong
; in Memento (2000), a mystery directed by Christopher Nolan
about short term memory loss; and in Jean-Luc Godard's
short film De l'origine du XXIe siècle pour moi (2000). In Irréversible
(2002), the technique is used so thoroughly that the end credits
are not only shown at the beginning of the movie, but they roll down the screen, rather than upwards as is familiar. The 2004 film 5x2
, directed by François Ozon
, tells the story of a relationship between two people in five episodes using reverse chronology.
Atom Egoyan
, influenced by Pinter's plays, tells the story of The Sweet Hereafter
(1997) in reverse chronology, with the first scene of the film set in 1977 and the last in 1968. In Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
(2004), a main substory is told in reverse.
Coup de Sang, a French film, by Jean Marboeuf—2006—uses limited reverse chronology. The film begins with the revelation that the main character will commit a murder one week from the next scene, although it is not revealed who will be killed or why.
, and the 1997 episode, "The Betrayal
", of the hit sitcom Seinfeld
, employs the technique. The Seinfeld episode is a take-off of the Harold Pinter play "Betrayal" and has a character named "Pinter." The 2000 X-Files episode "Redrum" (in which a character experiences the events in reverse along with the audience) and the 2002 ER
episode, "Hindsight", does as well. A 1997 "Star Trek: Voyager
" episode, "Before and After
", which writer Kenneth Biller claimed was based on a Martin Amis
novel "Time's Arrow
", also features a character experiencing the events in reverse along with the audience. Sealab 2021
episode "Shrabster" is also in reverse order.
", scripted by Jack Butterworth and published in 1975, included the concept of human lives running backwards. People were shown to be exhumed, reunited with families, separated from their spouses in order to attend school, and finally returned to the womb. Dialogue was reversed also. Alan Moore
's 1983 short story "The Reversible Man" from issue 308 of the comic "2000AD" told an ordinary man's life backwards, using the same concept as Butterworth but recasting it as a first-person narrative. Brian K. Vaughan
wrote an issue of the ongoing Midnighter
series told in reverse chronology. The issue explored the fact that the character Midnighter has the ability to calculate millions of possible scenarios for any given situation. The issue does not have the scenes in reverse order, but rather the individual pages run backwards.
, are, he says, "in a rather reverse order"; indeed, the final verse begins with the words "All along the watchtower", and if reversed, the verse
s would tell the story in the correct order.
The song "One Thing Leads to Another" by the Pet Shop Boys
(on a limited release of their 1993 album Very) describes the events leading up to a man's death in reverse order.
Multiple music videos, including Coldplay
's "The Scientist
" use reverse chronology in which a scene plays backwards while someone sings normally. This is done by filming the video chronologically but getting the actor to sing the lyrics backwards. The music video for Enigma's "Return to Innocence" uses reverse chronology showing a man's life, beginning with his death as an old man and ending with his baptism as an infant.
In a story employing this technique, the first scene
Scene (fiction)
In fiction, a scene is a unit of drama. A sequel is what follows; an aftermath. Together, scene and sequel provide the building blocks of plot for short stories, novels, and other forms of fiction.-Characteristics of a scene:...
shown is actually the conclusion to the plot. Once that scene ends, the penultimate scene is shown, and so on, so that the final scene the viewer sees is the first chronologically.
Many stories employ 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...
, showing prior events, but whereas the scene order of most conventional films is A-B-C-etc, a film in reverse chronology goes Z-Y-X-etc.
As a hypothetical example, if the fairy tale
Fairy tale
A fairy tale is a type of short story that typically features such folkloric characters, such as fairies, goblins, elves, trolls, dwarves, giants or gnomes, and usually magic or enchantments. However, only a small number of the stories refer to fairies...
Jack and the Beanstalk
Jack and the Beanstalk
Jack and the Beanstalk is a folktale said by English historian Francis Palgrave to be an oral legend that arrived in England with the Vikings. The tale is closely associated with the tale of Jack the Giant-killer. It is known under a number of versions...
was told using reverse chronology, the opening scene would depict Jack chopping the beanstalk down and killing the giant. The next scene would feature Jack being discovered by the giant and climbing down the beanstalk in fear of his life. Later, we would see Jack running into the man with the infamous magic beans, then, at the end of the film, being sent off by his mother to sell the cow.
Purpose
The unusual nature of this method means it is only used in stories of a specific nature. For example, Memento features a man with anterograde amnesiaAnterograde amnesia
Anterograde amnesia is a loss of the ability to create new memories after the event that caused the amnesia, leading to a partial or complete inability to recall the recent past, while long-term memories from before the event remain intact. This is in contrast to retrograde amnesia, where memories...
, meaning he is unable to form new memories. The film parallels the protagonist's perspective by unfolding in reverse chronological order, leaving the audience as ignorant of the events that occurred prior to each scene (which, played in reverse chronological order, will not be revealed until later) as the protagonist is.
In the film Irréversible
Irréversible
Irréversible is a 2002 French drama film written and directed by Gaspar Noé, starring Monica Bellucci, Vincent Cassel and Albert Dupontel. The film employs a non-linear narrative and follows two men as they try to avenge a brutally raped girlfriend...
, an act of homicidal
Homicide
Homicide refers to the act of a human killing another human. Murder, for example, is a type of homicide. It can also describe a person who has committed such an act, though this use is rare in modern English...
violence takes place at the start of the movie (i.e. it is the final event to take place). During the remainder of the film we learn not only that the violence is an act of vengeance, but what exactly is being avenged. The film was highly controversial for its graphic nature; had the scenes been shown in chronological order, this violent content would make it a simple, and pointlessly brutal, revenge movie. However, as it is, told in reverse, the audience is made to consider the exact consequences of each action, and there is often 'more than meets the eye'.
Literature
The epic poem AeneidAeneid
The Aeneid is a Latin epic poem, written by Virgil between 29 and 19 BC, that tells the legendary story of Aeneas, a Trojan who travelled to Italy, where he became the ancestor of the Romans. It is composed of roughly 10,000 lines in dactylic hexameter...
, written by Virgil
Virgil
Publius Vergilius Maro, usually called Virgil or Vergil in English , was an ancient Roman poet of the Augustan period. He is known for three major works of Latin literature, the Eclogues , the Georgics, and the epic Aeneid...
in the 1st century BC, uses reverse chronology within scenes. In "The Three Apples", a murder mystery
Crime fiction
Crime fiction is the literary genre that fictionalizes crimes, their detection, criminals and their motives. It is usually distinguished from mainstream fiction and other genres such as science fiction or historical fiction, but boundaries can be, and indeed are, blurred...
in the One Thousand and One Nights, the middle part of the story shows a flashback of events leading up to the discovery of a dead body at the beginning of the story. The action of W. R. Burnett's novel, Goodbye to the Past (1934), moves continually from 1929 to 1873. Edward Lewis Wallant
Edward Lewis Wallant
Edward Lewis Wallant was an American writer.-Life:He lived most of his life in New Haven, Connecticut. Yet his years at Pratt in Brooklyn, daily commuting to the city and frequent visits to jazz clubs impacted the New York settings of his books.His first works were short stories published in the...
uses flashbacks in reverse chronology in The Human Season (1960). The pessimistic masterpiece Christopher Homm (1965), a novel by C. H. Sisson
C. H. Sisson
Charles Hubert Sisson CH was a British writer, best known as a poet and translator.-Life:...
, is also told in reverse chronology.
Philip K. Dick
Philip K. Dick
Philip Kindred Dick was an American novelist, short story writer and essayist whose published work is almost entirely in the science fiction genre. Dick explored sociological, political and metaphysical themes in novels dominated by monopolistic corporations, authoritarian governments and altered...
, in his 1967 novel Counter-Clock World
Counter-Clock World
Counter-Clock World is a 1967 science fiction novel by author Philip K. Dick. It was expanded from his short story Your Appointment Will Be Yesterday, first published in the August 1966 edition of Amazing Stories.- Plot introduction :...
, describes a future in which time has started to move in reverse, resulting in the dead reviving in their own graves ("old-birth"), living their lives in reverse, eventually ending in returning to the womb, and splitting into an egg and a sperm during copulation between a recipient woman and a man. The novel was expanded from Dick's short story Your Appointment Will Be Yesterday, first published in the August 1966 edition of Amazing Stories
Amazing Stories
Amazing Stories was an American science fiction magazine launched in April 1926 by Hugo Gernsback's Experimenter Publishing. It was the first magazine devoted solely to science fiction...
.
Martin Amis
Martin Amis
Martin Louis Amis is a British novelist, the author of many novels including Money and London Fields . He is currently Professor of Creative Writing at the Centre for New Writing at the University of Manchester, but will step down at the end of the 2010/11 academic year...
's novel "Time's Arrow
Time's arrow
Time's Arrow may refer to:*Time's Arrow , by Martin Amis*"Time's Arrow" , a short story by Arthur C. Clarke*"Time's Arrow" , a two-part episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation-See also:...
" (1991) tells the story of a man who, it seems, brings dead people to life. Eventually it is revealed that the story is being seen backwards, and he was a doctor at Auschwitz who brought death to live people. He escaped to America, and the novel starts with his death and ends with his birth. Amis writes in the Afterword that he had a "certain paragraph" from 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 (1969), in mind. As he waits to be taken by aliens to the planet Tralfamadore, the protagonist, Billy Pilgrim, watches a war movie backwards. American planes full of holes fly backwards as German planes suck bullets from them; bombers take their bombs back to base where they are returned to the States, reduced to ore and buried. The American fliers became high school kids again, and, Billy guesses, Hitler ultimately returns to babyhood.
Iain Banks's novel Use of Weapons
Use of Weapons
Use of Weapons is a science fiction novel by Scottish writer Iain M. Banks, first published in 1990 as the third novel in the Culture series.-Plot introduction:...
interweaves two parallel stories, one told in standard chronology and one in reverse.
Theater
A number of playsPlay (theatre)
A play is a form of literature written by a playwright, usually consisting of scripted dialogue between characters, intended for theatrical performance rather than just reading. There are rare dramatists, notably George Bernard Shaw, who have had little preference whether their plays were performed...
have employed this technique. George S. Kaufman
George S. Kaufman
George Simon Kaufman was an American playwright, theatre director and producer, humorist, and drama critic. In addition to comedies and political satire, he wrote several musicals, notably for the Marx Brothers...
and Moss Hart's
Moss Hart
Moss Hart was an American playwright and theatre director, best known for his interpretations of musical theater on Broadway.-Early years:...
1934 play, Merrily We Roll Along
Merrily We Roll Along
Merrily We Roll Along is a play by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart. It concerns a man who has lost the idealistic values of his youth. Its innovative structure presents the story in reverse order, with the character regressing from a mournful adult to a young man whose future is filled with...
, is told in reverse order, as is the Harold Pinter
Harold Pinter
Harold Pinter, CH, CBE was a Nobel Prize–winning English playwright and screenwriter. One of the most influential modern British dramatists, his writing career spanned more than 50 years. His best-known plays include The Birthday Party , The Homecoming , and Betrayal , each of which he adapted to...
play Betrayal
Betrayal (play)
Betrayal is a play written by Harold Pinter in 1978. Critically regarded as one of the English playwright's major dramatic works, it features his characteristically economical dialogue, characters' hidden emotions and veiled motivations, and their self-absorbed competitive one-upmanship,...
(1978).
Film
In 1927, Jean EpsteinJean Epstein
Jean Epstein was a French filmmaker, film theorist, literary critic, and novelist. Although he is remembered today primarily for his adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe's The Fall of the House of Usher, Epstein directed three dozen films and was an influential critic of literature and film from the...
's La glace à trois faces (The Three Sided Mirror) features a sequence where the events happen in reverse, beginning with the protagonist's exit from a room until the viewer sees the entrance. Pinter's play was made into a film in 1983; this was the first important film set in reverse chronology, though it was preceded by the Czech comedy Happy End, (1968), a farce which starts with a guillotined man finding his head popped back on his shoulders and ends with him as a new-born being pushed back into his mother's womb. The technique was later employed in Peppermint Candy
Peppermint Candy
Peppermint Candy is a 1999 film, the second film from South Korean director Lee Chang-dong. The movie starts with the suicide of the protagonist and uses reverse chronology to depict some of the key events of the past 20 years of his life that led to his death.The film was received well, especially...
(2000), by South Korean director Lee Chang-dong
Lee Chang-dong
Lee Chang-dong is a South Korean film director, screenwriter and novelist. He won the 2008 Special Director's Prize at the Asian Film Awards and has been nominated for the Golden Lion and Palme d'Or. Lee served as South Korea's Minister of Culture and Tourism from 2003 to 2004.-Life and career:Lee...
; in Memento (2000), a mystery directed by 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,...
about short term memory loss; and in Jean-Luc Godard's
Jean-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"....
short film De l'origine du XXIe siècle pour moi (2000). In Irréversible
Irréversible
Irréversible is a 2002 French drama film written and directed by Gaspar Noé, starring Monica Bellucci, Vincent Cassel and Albert Dupontel. The film employs a non-linear narrative and follows two men as they try to avenge a brutally raped girlfriend...
(2002), the technique is used so thoroughly that the end credits
Closing credits
Closing credits or end credits are added at the end of a motion picture, television program, or video game to list the cast and crew involved in the production. They usually appear as a list of names in small type, which either flip very quickly from page to page, or move smoothly across the...
are not only shown at the beginning of the movie, but they roll down the screen, rather than upwards as is familiar. The 2004 film 5x2
5x2
5x2 is a 2004 French film directed by François Ozon, which uncovers the back story to the gradual disintegration of a middle class marriage by depicting five key moments in the relationship, but in reverse order.-Plot:...
, directed by François Ozon
François Ozon
François Ozon is a French film director and screenwriter and whose films are usually characterized by sharp satirical wit and a freewheeling view on human sexuality....
, tells the story of a relationship between two people in five episodes using reverse chronology.
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...
, influenced by Pinter's plays, tells the story of The Sweet Hereafter
The Sweet Hereafter (film)
The Sweet Hereafter is a 1997 Canadian film written and directed by Atom Egoyan. It is an adaptation of the novel of the same name by Russell Banks.-Plot:...
(1997) in reverse chronology, with the first scene of the film set in 1977 and the last in 1968. In Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is a 2004 American romantic science fiction film about an estranged couple who have each other erased from their memories, scripted by Charlie Kaufman and directed by the French director, Michel Gondry. The film uses elements of science fiction, psychological...
(2004), a main substory is told in reverse.
Coup de Sang, a French film, by Jean Marboeuf—2006—uses limited reverse chronology. The film begins with the revelation that the main character will commit a murder one week from the next scene, although it is not revealed who will be killed or why.
Television
The made-for-television drama 2 Friends (1986), by Jane CampionJane Campion
Jane Campion is a filmmaker and screenwriter. She is one of the most internationally successful New Zealand directors, although most of her work has been made in or financed by other countries, principally Australia – where she now lives – and the United States...
, and the 1997 episode, "The Betrayal
The Betrayal
"The Betrayal" is the 164th episode of the NBC sitcom Seinfeld. This was the eighth episode for the ninth and final season. It aired on November 20, 1997. The episode is colloquially referred to as The Backwards Episode due to its use of reverse chronology, starting with the final scene and playing...
", of the hit sitcom Seinfeld
Seinfeld
Seinfeld is an American television sitcom that originally aired on NBC from July 5, 1989, to May 14, 1998, lasting nine seasons, and is now in syndication. It was created by Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld, the latter starring as a fictionalized version of himself...
, employs the technique. The Seinfeld episode is a take-off of the Harold Pinter play "Betrayal" and has a character named "Pinter." The 2000 X-Files episode "Redrum" (in which a character experiences the events in reverse along with the audience) and the 2002 ER
ER (TV series)
ER is an American medical drama television series created by novelist Michael Crichton that aired on NBC from September 19, 1994 to April 2, 2009. It was produced by Constant c Productions and Amblin Entertainment, in association with Warner Bros. Television...
episode, "Hindsight", does as well. A 1997 "Star Trek: Voyager
Star Trek: Voyager
Star Trek: Voyager is a science fiction television series set in the Star Trek universe. Set in the 24th century from the year 2371 through 2378, the series follows the adventures of the Starfleet vessel USS Voyager, which becomes stranded in the Delta Quadrant 70,000 light-years from Earth while...
" episode, "Before and After
Before and After (Star Trek: Voyager)
"Before and After" is an episode of the science-fiction television series Star Trek: Voyager, and the 21st episode of the third season. It has an average fan rating of 4.1/5 on the official Star Trek website as of September 2009 and foreshadows events seen in a later episode, "Year of...
", which writer Kenneth Biller claimed was based on a Martin Amis
Martin Amis
Martin Louis Amis is a British novelist, the author of many novels including Money and London Fields . He is currently Professor of Creative Writing at the Centre for New Writing at the University of Manchester, but will step down at the end of the 2010/11 academic year...
novel "Time's Arrow
Time's arrow
Time's Arrow may refer to:*Time's Arrow , by Martin Amis*"Time's Arrow" , a short story by Arthur C. Clarke*"Time's Arrow" , a two-part episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation-See also:...
", also features a character experiencing the events in reverse along with the audience. Sealab 2021
Sealab 2021
Sealab 2021 is an American animated television series. It was shown on Cartoon Network's adult-oriented programming block, Adult Swim. It premiered on November 23, 2000 and the final episode aired on April 25, 2005...
episode "Shrabster" is also in reverse order.
Comics
The story "The Time Eater" from issue 40 of the comic "VampirellaVampirella
Vampirella is a fictional character, a comic book vampire heroine created by Forrest J Ackerman and costume designer Trina Robbins in Warren Publishing's black-and-white horror comics magazine Vampirella #1 . Writer-editor Archie Goodwin later developed the character from horror-story hostess, in...
", scripted by Jack Butterworth and published in 1975, included the concept of human lives running backwards. People were shown to be exhumed, reunited with families, separated from their spouses in order to attend school, and finally returned to the womb. Dialogue was reversed also. Alan Moore
Alan Moore
Alan Oswald Moore is an English writer primarily known for his work in comic books, a medium where he has produced a number of critically acclaimed and popular series, including Watchmen, V for Vendetta, and From Hell...
's 1983 short story "The Reversible Man" from issue 308 of the comic "2000AD" told an ordinary man's life backwards, using the same concept as Butterworth but recasting it as a first-person narrative. Brian K. Vaughan
Brian K. Vaughan
Brian Keller Vaughan is an American comic book and television writer. He is best known for the comic book series Y: The Last Man, Ex Machina, Runaways, and Pride of Baghdad, and was one of the principal writers of the television series Lost, during seasons three through five...
wrote an issue of the ongoing Midnighter
Midnighter
Midnighter is a fictional comic book superhero, best known as a member of the rogue superhero team The Authority. Created by writer Warren Ellis and artist Bryan Hitch, he first appeared in Stormwatch #4, before appearing in various Authority books and series and his own eponymous ongoing series...
series told in reverse chronology. The issue explored the fact that the character Midnighter has the ability to calculate millions of possible scenarios for any given situation. The issue does not have the scenes in reverse order, but rather the individual pages run backwards.
Anime
The 2007 anime TV series Touka Gettan employed entirely this narrative method. All 26 episodes were aired in chronologically reverse order, with the first episode being the ending of the story while the last episode being the beginning.Music
The lyrics to "All Along the Watchtower", written by Bob DylanBob Dylan
Bob Dylan is an American singer-songwriter, musician, poet, film director and painter. He has been a major and profoundly influential figure in popular music and culture for five decades. Much of his most celebrated work dates from the 1960s when he was an informal chronicler and a seemingly...
, are, he says, "in a rather reverse order"; indeed, the final verse begins with the words "All along the watchtower", and if reversed, the verse
Verse (poetry)
A verse is formally a single line in a metrical composition, e.g. poetry. However, the word has come to represent any division or grouping of words in such a composition, which traditionally had been referred to as a stanza....
s would tell the story in the correct order.
The song "One Thing Leads to Another" by the Pet Shop Boys
Pet Shop Boys
Pet Shop Boys are an English electronic dance music duo, consisting of Neil Tennant, who provides main vocals, keyboards and occasional guitar, and Chris Lowe on keyboards....
(on a limited release of their 1993 album Very) describes the events leading up to a man's death in reverse order.
Multiple music videos, including Coldplay
Coldplay
Coldplay are a British alternative rock band formed in 1996 by lead vocalist Chris Martin and lead guitarist Jonny Buckland at University College London. After they formed Pectoralz, Guy Berryman joined the group as a bassist and they changed their name to Starfish. Will Champion joined as a...
's "The Scientist
The Scientist (song)
"The Scientist" is the second single from British alternative rock band Coldplay's second album, A Rush of Blood to the Head. The song was written collaboratively by all the band members for the album. It is built around a piano ballad, with its lyrics telling the story about a man's desire to love...
" use reverse chronology in which a scene plays backwards while someone sings normally. This is done by filming the video chronologically but getting the actor to sing the lyrics backwards. The music video for Enigma's "Return to Innocence" uses reverse chronology showing a man's life, beginning with his death as an old man and ending with his baptism as an infant.