Over the past 25 years non-chronological storytelling has become a widely displayed trope in American cinema. By shifting the order of events in a film, i.e. by jumping back and forth on the timeline or going backwards, specific filmic techniques as well as the interplay between form and content of a film become very salient.

The representation of complex topics as identity, trauma, relationships or memory can be thoroughly examined by linking them to the films' non-chronological strucutre. As order can furthermore be closely associated with time, the connection between those topics and the role of time plays a crucial part as well. By lookng at a number of exemplary works of the past two decades we will analyse how the films self-reflexively apply, distort and expand common film techniques, how a non-chronological depiction of events affects the reading of a film's narrative, and how those films put the narratative's relation to time at the forefront.


Films:


Pulp Fiction

Memento

21 Grams

Inception

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Arrival

Martha Marcy May Marlene