Screenwriters strive to create narratives that are emotionally compelling and engaging. Traditionally, most stories have a beginning, a middle, and an end, which are told in chronological (linear) order. This has worked well in the art of cinema, often with the ending culminating in an exciting finale and the beginning and middle providing the motives and exposition leading to this conclusion.
Other, less conformist, movies have occasionally tried to play with these conventions and tell the stories out of chronological order, using a non-linear narrative. Numerous techniques can be used in telling these stories including flashbacks, reverse storytelling or jumping between multiple interweaving stories taking place in different time periods. It can get a bit more complex when utilizing elements of sci-fi like in Inception or Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, in which a character’s memory is accessed and used as a storytelling device. If done intelligently, without becoming too muddled or confusing, non-linear narratives can result in compelling movies. In some ways, it can put the viewers in the hands of the filmmakers, as they’re beholden to them as to when and how they are privy to information and insights that allow them to piece the plot together, resulting in a more engaging viewing experience. Here are some of the best movies ever made that make use of a non-linear narrative.
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8 Citizen Kane
RKO Radio Pictures
Another movie widely regarded as one of the greatest ever. Released in 1941 and directed by, and starring Orson Welles, the plot of Citizen Kane follows an investigation of publishing tycoon, Charles Foster Kane following the revelation of his cryptic dying words. The story is told in a number of flashbacks, which are presented in a non-linear fashion and often overlap, as sporadic and incomplete details of conflicting stories about his scandalous life gradually come to light. Interestingly, according to Grunge, despite universal critical acclaim and being one of the forefathers of non-linear storytelling in cinema, the movie couldn’t even recuperate production costs at the box office at the time of its initial release.
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7 Irreversible
LionsGate FIlms Home Entertainment
Gasper Noe’s shocking and controversial tale of revenge in Irreversible is particularly inspired in its use of non-linear narrative. The movie is told in reverse order, with each scene taking place chronologically before the one that precedes it. Behaviors and reactions initially are confusing to the audience, but as the movie begins to reveal more of the actions leading up to events, it gradually begins to fall into place, keeping audiences constantly guessing and eager to find out more. Early on, viewers are subjected to one of the most brutal attacks ever committed to film. Horrified, it’s hard to imagine what could possibly warrant such an attack. As we learn more, though, a certain scene later revealed will make the previous attack look like child’s play as the audience gains an understanding for its gut-wrenching motives. This is a movie that will remain embedded in your mind long after the end credits (or opening credits in this case) have rolled.
6 Pulp Fiction
Miramax Films
Pulp Fiction is widely regarded as one of the greatest movies of all time and for good reason. Pretty much every aspect of the movie is delivered to perfection, from the punchy dialogue littered with pop culture references, still quoted by movie buffs over 25 years later, to the twisty-turn non-linear interweaving storylines, to the ironic combination of humor and strong violence. Although most of this is down to Quentin Tarantino and his unique vision, it couldn’t have been executed as successfully as it was without one of the finest casts of actors ever assembled. The audience is treated to a masterclass in quality acting from the likes of Bruce Willis, Christopher Walken, Samuel L Jackson, Harvey Keitel, Uma Thurman, Ving Rhames, Tim Roth, and John Travolta. Travolta, in particular, has been praised alongside Jackson for their cooler than cool portrayals of a pair of cal and collected mass-murdering hitmen.
5 Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels
Gramercy Pictures / Columbia TriStar
Often considered the British equivalent of Quentin Tarantino, Guy Ritchie has made a couple of films that don’t follow a traditional narrative structure. The boldest and best of these is arguably Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. Like Pulp Fiction, the viewers are thrown back and forth into various interweaving stories, this time filled with gangsters, deceptions, guns, drugs, and dogs. It manages to keep audiences on the edge of their seats with its use of crash zooms, seemingly involuntary camera moments, visual storytelling, wonderful needle drops, and profanity-filled dialogue.
4 Last Night in Soho
Film4
Probably the most recent entry on the list 2021’s Last Night in Soho saw director Edgar Wright dropping the comedy elements of previous works and creating an intelligent and thought-provoking psychological thriller. Before long, it becomes apparent that it is actually telling two separate stories that are somehow interlinked. One is set in the present day and is of a young woman who has moved into London to study fashion at a top university, and the other is set in 1960s London about an aspiring dancer and the death and destruction that seems to follow her. Nothing is quite as it seems, however, and viewers are kept guessing how it is all connected right until the end as we’re thrown back and forth between these two stories.
3 Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Anonymous Content
The human memory seems to be an ongoing theme when it comes to non-linear movies, and it’s not hard to see why. Due to the vastness of one’s memories, sometimes simple chronological retelling of those memories would do little justice in illustrating the erratic and selective functioning of human memory. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is all about memories, as an ex-couple (played by Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet delivering some of their finest work to date) undergo a procedure to delete all memories of each other.
2 Death Trilogy: Amores Perros, 21 Grams, Babel
Focus Features
Impossible to choose just one, we’ve gone for all three entries in Alejandro González Iñárritu’s spellbinding and aptly named Death Trilogy. Not acting as direct sequels to one another, but merely related by theme and style, each features multiple stories running concurrently, intricately interweaving throughout the movies’ run time and all often connected by the theme of ‘death’. Amores Perros is an emotional examination of life in Mexican society via three interconnected stories. It was followed by the psychological thriller 21 Grams, which, thanks to the success of its predecessor, had a larger budget and boasted the likes of Sean Penn, Benicio Del Toro, and Naomi Watts as cast members. The final entry, and possibly the most ambitious, was Babel ,which consists of four interrelated stories set in Morocco, Mexico, the United States, and Japan, all played out in four different languages and starring Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett among others. All three movies are fantastic examples of the impact non-linear narratives can have on creating truly fulfilling stories.
1 Memento
Summit Entertainment
One of the flagship movies in modern non-linear storytelling, Memento adopts this approach simply for the sake of it, but is a well-thought-out decision that makes perfect sense given the nature of the main protagonist (played fantastically in a career defining moment from Guy Pearce) and his short-term memory loss condition (anterograde amnesia), which prevents him from the ability to form new memories. It follows him as he attempts to track down those who murdered his wife, using a memory system he created involving Polaroid photographs and tattoos to function as reminders of the memories he loses. The movie’s narrative is presented as two different sequences of scenes intercut throughout. A series set in the past presented chronologically in black and white and a series of color sequences shown in reverse order representing the mental state of Pearce’s character. Both meet at the end revealing the audience one of cinema’s all-time greatest twists.
