When editing a movie, you can choose to edit the sequences with a chronological structure (or linear structure) or with a non-chronological structure. With a linear structure you put the sequences in the order which they appear in the timeline, you have a beginning, a middle and an end. If you choose to edit with a non-chronological structure, you choose to not refer to a linear timeline but to put the sequences in a particular order for a good reason. I am going to discuss the purposes and effects of the different narrative structures in a movie.
Like I said, with a linear structure you follow a linear timeline. In the beginning you set up the action, you introduce the characters, the context of the movie. For example, in the movie ‘Modern Times’ by Charlie Chaplin the introduction is showing us Little Tramp having a nervous breakdown because of his work at the factory. The turning point of this first part is when he is hospitalized. The middle part, the longest one, is when little Tramp goes out of the hospital. He is then taken for a demonstration leader and is arrested. When he is finally free, he meets the young orphan who is stealing food to not starve. And the two vagabonds leave to search for a job. This second part shows the both characters happy but living in misery, the plot point, which will introduce the end of the movie, is when they realize that they still need to work in order to live. The third part, the last one, is showing use Little Tramp and the orphan trying to find a job and ending being always overwhelmed by the infernal rate that they must hold. But in the end even if they leave their jobs every time, Little Tramp is convinced that they will find a job in which they will get along. It is the closure of the film; in the last action we see them marching back to the camera to show that they are moving forward.
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The purposes of the linear type of structure are to offer the most accessible story for the audience. Each scene leads to the next one with a natural progression. You follow the characters, you have the same information, you see the same things. The effects of this type of structure are that the audience feels connected to the character more easily. If the director wishes to share a message within the movie, the audience will be more receptive because to movie is more somehow simpler to understand.
On the contrary, non-chronological structures shows several distinct stories in which some of the characters come and go. The stories are not in a chronological order, we can find flashbacks, flash-forwards, the directors can choose to jump backward, forwards, or even sideways in time in order to narrate the story. With this type of structure, the director is not seeing the time as linear but as a loop. For example, in the movie ‘Run Lola Run’, the director Tom Tykwer is clearly seeing the time as not linear but as something that can fasten, slow down, and as a loop. At first sight, the movie follows a quite classic time structure of a race against time, however the real-time is quickly questioned by the repetition of the same sequence with some variations and with reference to the video games world. The director wants us to think that we are trapped in a time loop. The loop creates a virtual effect, as in a video game: the two first versions introduce a distancing that prevents the audience to completely believe in the happy end. But another effect of this particular structure is to allows us, the audience to choose. Whether you choose Lola to die, Manni to die or a happy ending where Lola and Manni are reunited after each succeed to gathered 100.000 DM. It empowers the viewer in the way that we can choose which one of the three sequences we like, and we want to be real. The director gives us the fantasy of being in control of the movie when in reality, we are just consuming a piece of art. Moreover, this movie also shows us another use of time; the director is showing use that life goes at different pace. For example, he decided to intersperse the scene when Lola is running which is very fast with the scene in the office which has a very slow pace. But the time in both these scenes is the same, it is in fact to show how we live differently in time. Everybody's experience of time is different, time can drag, go on forever, can stop or can go really fast.
Another purpose of the non-chronological structure is to challenge the audience. It allows it to be engaged in the movie, wondering how the stories are intersect with the others. It can also create a viewer who is invested in the viewing and who wants to re-watch the movie in order to understand the storyline completely. A perfect example of this is the movie ‘Pulp Fiction’ by Quentin Tarantino. This movie is made up with three stories with a different protagonist each time. The scenes appear to be independent but are in fact, are linked with each other’s to make the plot. As they contain elements to understand the movie completely. If you try to put in a chronological order the sequences, the movie starts in the middle, goes back and forth further and further in time, in order to return and conclude in the middle. Thus, impossible to fear a hypothetical death of Vincent Vega during the robbery of the coffee shop in the last act of the film because the audience saw him being shot a little earlier in the film by Butch. We can therefore deduce that for the director the result of the action is not an end itself, it is what leads to this result that deserves to be developed.
We saw that the way we chose to edit our movie can drastically change the way that the audience will consume it. If the film follows a linear structure, it will be easier to understand, sometimes even more accessible to a bigger audience too. While if the film follows a non-chronological line, we expect a reflection exercise from the viewer which makes it much more important. In my opinion the non-chronological structure is the most interesting one by far because it gives us the power to choose how we prefer to consume the movie.
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