Reverse chronology

Last updated

Reverse chronology is a narrative structure and method of storytelling whereby the plot is revealed in reverse order.

Contents

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.

Purpose

A narrative that employs reverse chronology presents effects before causes, asking the audience to piece together information about character motivations and the plot and encouraging them to ask themselves questions like "is this why she acted this way?" Scenes set in the past are interpreted in light of information the viewer has already learned from scenes set in the future, giving the audience a degree of narrative agency. [1]

Examples of use

Literature

The epic poem Aeneid , written by Virgil in the 1st century BC, uses reverse chronology within scenes. [2] The action of W. R. Burnett's novel, Goodbye to the Past (1934), moves continually from 1929 to 1873. [3] The Long View (1956) by Elizabeth Jane Howard describes a marriage in reverse chronology from 1950s London back to its beginning in 1926. [4] Edward Lewis Wallant uses flashbacks in reverse chronology in The Human Season (1960). [5] The novel Christopher Homm (1965), by C. H. Sisson, is also told in reverse chronology. [6]

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 .

Iain Banks's novel Use of Weapons (1990) interweaves two parallel stories, one told in standard chronology and one in reverse, both concluding at a critical moment in the main character's life.

Martin Amis's 1991 novel Time's Arrow 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 the United States, 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.

Julia Alvarez's novel How the García Girls Lost Their Accents (1991) opens in 1989 with one of the characters returning to her native Dominican Republic. The story of why the family left and their attempts to succeed in New York are told in reverse chronological order, with the last events happening in 1956. [7]

The Night Watch (2006) by Sarah Waters is written in three episodes moving backwards from 1947 to 1941, beginning in post-war London and moving back to the early days of the war. It was shortlisted for both the 2006 Man Booker Prize and the 2006 Orange Prize. All the Birds, Singing (2013) by the Australian author Evie Wyld, relates two stories in parallel, both beginning from the same point in time, one running forwards and one backwards. The novel won the 2014 Miles Franklin Award and the 2014 Encore Award. [8]

Baoshu's story "What Has Passed Shall in Kinder Light Appear" is set in the context of Chinese (and world) history running backward from 2008 until the 1930s. However, the personal lives of individual characters move forward alongside the reversed flow of history.

Theatre

A number of plays 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). Kaufman and Hart's play was adapted as a musical comedy by Stephen Sondheim in 1981, and Pinter's play was made into a film in 1983.

Film

In 1927, Jean Epstein'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. The Czech comedy Happy End (1966) is 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. [9] 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. [10] 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). [11] 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.

Peppermint Candy begins with the protagonist, Yongho, disrupting a class reunion, then climbing onto nearby railroad tracks where he waits for a train to hit him, screaming "I want to go back!" right before it does (not shown on camera). The film then shows earlier periods of Yongho's life, each time preceded by a view of him on the tracks from further away, as the experiences that made him disillusioned and suicidal are revealed, culminating in him as an idealistic young man optimistic about his future at his class's graduation at the same riverfront park. [12]

Memento (2000) features a man with anterograde amnesia, 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 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."

The 2004 film 5x2 , directed by François Ozon, tells the story of a relationship between two people in five episodes using reverse chronology. [13]

In Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004), a main substory is told in reverse.

In the 2007 movie P.S. I Love You , the scenes in which Gerry Kennedy (Gerard Butler) meets and courts Holly (Hilary Swank) are shown in reverse. [14]

Television

The made-for-television drama Two Friends (1986), by Jane Campion, 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." [11]

"Redrum", a 2000 episode of The X-Files, uses the technique in focusing on a character experiencing the events in reverse along with the audience. The 2002 ER episode "Hindsight" uses reverse chronology to illustrate the events leading to traumatic car accident. 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. The Sealab 2021 episode "Shrabster" is also in reverse order. For a few seasons, the revived Doctor Who had an extensive storyline focusing on a relationship between the Doctor and his companions' daughter (River Song) from the future based on "opposite timelines" (i.e., as the Doctor was travelling through time on one path, River was travelling on an opposite path) causing them to interact in opposite chronological order. In 2017, the British TV mini-series Rellik (Killer backwards) tells a story about a serial killer in backwards order. In 2018, the episode "Once Removed", from the series Inside No. 9 uses reverse chronology to tell a dark story about a family who is moving house, and the murder that subsequently begins. Also from 2018, the second installment of the FX anthology series American Crime Story focuses on the assassination of designer Gianni Versace, employing reverse chronology through the course of several episodes to explore the background of Versace's killer Andrew Cunanan.

The British police drama Rellik ("killer" spelled backwards) begins with the police killing the murder suspect; the crimes and investigation are shown in reverse order from there, ending with the childhood trauma that led the killer to his path.

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Plot (narrative)</span> Cause-and-effect sequence of events in a narrative

In a literary work, film, or other narrative, the plot is the sequence of events in which each event affects the next one through the principle of cause-and-effect. The causal events of a plot can be thought of as a series of events linked by the connector "and so". Plots can vary from the simple—such as in a traditional ballad—to forming complex interwoven structures, with each part sometimes referred to as a subplot or imbroglio.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Story within a story</span> Literary device

A story within a story, also referred to as an embedded narrative, is a literary device in which a character within a story becomes the narrator of a second story. Multiple layers of stories within stories are sometimes called nested stories. A play may have a brief play within it, such as in Shakespeare's play Hamlet; a film may show the characters watching a short film; or a novel may contain a short story within the novel. A story within a story can be used in all types of narration including poems, and songs.

Diegesis is a style of fiction storytelling in which a participating narrator offers an on-site, often interior, view of the scene to the reader, viewer, or listener by subjectively describing the actions and, in some cases, thoughts, of one or more characters. Diegetic events are those experienced by both the characters within a piece and the audience, while non-diegetic elements of a story make up the "fourth wall" separating the characters from the audience. Diegesis in music describes a character's ability to hear the music presented for the audience, in the context of musical theatre or film scoring.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Foreshadowing</span> Literary technique

Foreshadowing is a narrative device in which a storyteller gives an advance hint of what is to come later in the story. Foreshadowing often appears at the beginning of a story, and it helps develop or subvert the audience's expectations about upcoming events.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">False protagonist</span> Literary technique

In fiction, a false protagonist is a literary technique, often used to make the plot more jarring or more memorable by fooling the audience's preconceptions, that constructs a character who the audience assumes is the protagonist but is later revealed not to be.

Story structure or narrative structure is the recognizable or comprehensible way in which a narrative's different elements are unified, including in a particularly chosen order and sometimes specifically referring to the ordering of the plot: the narrative series of events, though this can vary based on culture. In a play or work of theatre especially, this can be called dramatic structure, which is presented in audiovisual form. Story structure can vary by culture and by location. The following is an overview of various story structures and components that might be considered.

Narration is the use of a written or spoken commentary to convey a story to an audience. Narration is conveyed by a narrator: a specific person, or unspecified literary voice, developed by the creator of the story to deliver information to the audience, particularly about the plot: the series of events. Narration is a required element of all written stories, presenting the story in its entirety. It is optional in most other storytelling formats, such as films, plays, television shows and video games, in which the story can be conveyed through other means, like dialogue between characters or visual action.

A narrative work beginning in medias res opens in the chronological middle of the plot, rather than at the beginning. Often, exposition is initially bypassed, instead filled in gradually through dialogue, flashbacks, or description of past events. For example, Hamlet begins after the death of Hamlet's father which is later discovered to have been a murder. Characters make reference to King Hamlet's death without the plot's first establishment of this fact. Since the play is about Hamlet and the revenge more so than the motivation, Shakespeare uses in medias res to bypass superfluous exposition.

A plot twist is a literary technique that introduces a radical change in the direction or expected outcome of the plot in a work of fiction. When it happens near the end of a story, it is known as a twist ending or surprise ending. It may change the audience's perception of the preceding events, or introduce a new conflict that places it in a different context. A plot twist may be foreshadowed, to prepare the audience to accept it, but it usually comes with some element of surprise. There are various methods used to execute a plot twist, such as withholding information from the audience, or misleading them with ambiguous or false information. Not every plot has a twist, but some have multiple lesser ones, and some are defined by a single major twist.

A flashback, more formally known as analepsis, is an interjected scene that takes the narrative back in time from the current point in the story. Flashbacks are often used to recount events that happened before the story's primary sequence of events to fill in crucial backstory. In the opposite direction, a flashforward reveals events that will occur in the future. Both flashback and flashforward are used to cohere a story, develop a character, or add structure to the narrative. In literature, internal analepsis is a flashback to an earlier point in the narrative; external analepsis is a flashback to a time before the narrative started.

<i>Times Arrow</i> (novel) Book by Martin Amis

Time's Arrow: or The Nature of the Offence (1991) is a novel by Martin Amis. It was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1991. It is notable partly because the events occur in a reverse chronology, with time passing in reverse and the main character becoming younger and younger during the novel.

A flashforward is a scene that temporarily takes the narrative forward in time from the current point of the story in literature, film, television and other media. Flashforwards are often used to represent events expected, projected, or imagined to occur in the future. They may also reveal significant parts of the story that have not yet occurred, but soon will in greater detail. It is similar to foreshadowing, in which future events are not shown but rather implicitly hinted at. It is also similar to an ellipsis, which takes the narrative forward and is intended to skim over boring or uninteresting details, for example the aging of a character. It is primarily a postmodern narrative device, named by analogy to the more traditional flashback, which reveals events that occurred in the past.

Nonlinear narrative, disjointed narrative, or disrupted narrative is a narrative technique where events are portrayed, for example, out of chronological order or in other ways where the narrative does not follow the direct causality pattern of the events featured, such as parallel distinctive plot lines, dream immersions or narrating another story inside the main plot-line. The technique is common in electronic literature, and particularly in hypertext fiction, and is also well-established in print and other sequential media.

<i>Memento</i> (film) 2000 film by Christopher Nolan

Memento is a 2000 American neo-noir psychological thriller film written and directed by Sir Christopher Nolan, based on the short story "Memento Mori" by his brother Jonathan Nolan, which was later published in 2001. The film stars Guy Pearce, Carrie-Anne Moss, and Joe Pantoliano. The film follows Leonard Shelby (Pearce), a man who suffers from anterograde amnesia—resulting in short-term memory loss and the inability to form new memories—who uses an elaborate system of photographs, handwritten notes, and tattoos in an attempt to uncover the perpetrator who killed his wife and caused him to sustain the condition.

A narrative hook is a literary technique in the opening of a story that "hooks" the reader's attention so that they will keep on reading. The "opening" may consist of several paragraphs for a short story, or several pages for a novel, but ideally it is the opening sentence in the book.

"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. In this episode, Jerry betrays George by having sex with his girlfriend Nina, right before Elaine invites all three of them to come with her to India for the wedding of Sue Ellen Mischke, Elaine's longtime rival. The episode is colloquially referred to as the "backwards episode" due to its reverse chronology, starting with the final scene and playing in reverse order. Written collaboratively by Peter Mehlman and David Mandel, the episode bridges Seinfeld's final season to its past with scenes from George's engagement to Susan Ross and Jerry's moving in to his apartment, and with a gimmick-based format which evoked the series' early gimmick-based episodes like "The Chinese Restaurant" and "The Limo".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Drama (film and television)</span> Film and television genre

In film and television, drama is a category or genre of narrative fiction intended to be more serious than humorous in tone. The drama of this kind is usually qualified with additional terms that specify its particular super-genre, macro-genre, or micro-genre, such as soap opera, police crime drama, political drama, legal drama, historical drama, domestic drama, teen drama, and comedy-drama (dramedy). These terms tend to indicate a particular setting or subject matter, or they combine a drama's otherwise serious tone with elements that encourage a broader range of moods. To these ends, a primary element in a drama is the occurrence of conflict—emotional, social, or otherwise—and its resolution in the course of the storyline.

Happy End is a 1967 Czechoslovak comedy film directed by Oldřich Lipský. Theodor Pištěk designed the costumes for the film. The film is told backwards, beginning with the protagonist's death and ending with his birth.

Rellik is a crime drama television series created and written by brothers Harry and Jack Williams that premiered on 11 September 2017. The project was commissioned by the BBC in 2015, with Cinemax joining them later in November 2016. In the United States the series premiered on 13 April 2018.

Inspired by the biological classification system of the Linnaean taxonomy, screenwriter Eric R. Williams developed the Screenwriters Taxonomy in 2017 to create a common language of creative collaboration for filmmakers. Williams’ central thesis in The Screenwriters Taxonomy: A Roadmap to Collaborative Storytelling is that the term “genre” is used so broadly to describe films that the modern use of the word has become meaningless. The Screenwriter's Taxonomy proposes seven categories for discussing the creative process of telling cinematic stories.

  1. Type
  2. Super Genre
  3. Macrogenres
  4. Microgenres
  5. Voice
  6. Pathway
  7. Point of View

References

  1. ↑ Carruthers, Lee (2016). Doing Time: Temporality, Hermeneutics, and Contemporary Cinema. SUNY Press. pp. 65–68. ISBN   9781438460857.
  2. ↑ Albrecht, Michael von; & Schmeling, Gareth L. (1997). History of Roman Literature: From Livius Andronicus to Boethius, Vol. 1. Brill. p. 681. ISBN   90-04-09630-2
  3. ↑ Bordwell, David (April 2006). The Way Hollywood Tells It: Story and Style in Modern Movies. University of California Press. p. 91. ISBN   0-520-24622-5
  4. ↑ Mantel, Hilary (2016-01-30). "Elizabeth Jane Howard: Hilary Mantel on the novelist she tells everyone to read". The Guardian. ISSN   0261-3077 . Retrieved 2024-10-20.
  5. ↑ Serafin, Steven; & Bendixen, Alfred (2003). The Continuum Encyclopedia of American Literature. Continuum International Publishing Group. p. 1189. ISBN   0-8264-1517-2
  6. ↑ Head, Dominic (2006). The Cambridge Guide to Literature in English. Cambridge University Press. p. 1036. ISBN   0-521-83179-2
  7. ↑ ARLS Teen Book Review: How the García Girls Lost Their Accents
  8. ↑ Harvey, Samantha. 'When a Story is Best Told Backwards: on the Melancholy of Reverse Narratives', in Literary Hub, 15 November 2018
  9. ↑ "Cinema: Happy End". Time. 1968-06-28. Archived from the original on 2011-01-22. Retrieved 2010-05-22.
  10. ↑ MacDermott, Felim; & McGrath, Declan (2003). Screenwriting. Focal Press. p. 172. ISBN   0-240-80512-7
  11. 1 2 Gateward, Frances K. (2007). Seoul Searching: Culture and Identity in Contemporary Korean Cinema. SUNY Press. p. 136. ISBN   0-7914-7225-6
  12. ↑ Scott, A.O. (March 31, 2001). "Film Festival Reviews; A Life Retreats from Tragedy to Happy Beginnings". The New York Times . Retrieved March 21, 2024.
  13. ↑ Scott, A. O. (2005-02-07). "An Unhappy Marriage, From Divorce to Wedding". The New York Times. Retrieved 2020-04-22.
  14. ↑ Calamari, Alexandra (2007). "P.S. I Love You". Cinema Blend. Retrieved July 7, 2014.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.