One of my favorite storytelling devices is the non-chronological timeline. Sure, stories might seem to make the most sense in a linear fashion. This, then this, then this. But centuries of lived experience and storytelling seem to suggest that sometimes out of order just works best. Think about a TV show that begins at the end, and then flashes the “24 hours earlier” card, so you can see how some bonkers situation came to be. When done wrong, it can induce a groan, but when done right, the storytellers have you in the palm of their hands.
Its inventive storytelling structure is just one of many reasons Citizen Kane redefined the language of cinema. In more modern times, one master of the non-chronological story is none other than the Oscars reigning Best Director, Christopher Nolan. His film Memento broke brains with its clever forward-and-backwards timeline, and it has since become something of a Nolan calling card. And of course there’s also Pulp Fiction, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Mulholland Drive, and an endless stream of others.
It’s also the approach taken by John Crowley’s new romantic drama We Live in Time, which stars Andrew Garfield and Florence Pugh and tells the story of one couple’s life together, one anecdote at a time. Sometimes a new scene will begin and it’ll take the audience a minute to locate where they are in the journey, but the end result is something a lot like our memory. We don’t remember things in a perfect timeline, we remember in fragments and moments. With a non-chronological timeline, We Live in Time is allowed to make audiences laugh or cry at a moment’s notice, so that when the devastation really hits, we can appreciate the totality of the journey instead of just the finality of an ending.
We Live in Time is in theaters now.
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