Time shifters--Moviemakers and their disordered narratives

David Denby, the New Yorker’s astute film critic, focuses his attention on movies that play with time and their audiences in an article of interest to storytellers, regardless of medium.

The entire piece is thought-provoking, but one passage in particular jumped out at me; it’s an homage to narrative that is under assault in movie theaters around the world.

"Storytellers, relying on sequence and causality, make sense out of nonsense; they impose order, economy, and moral consequence on the helter-skelter wash of experience. The notion that one event causes another, and that the entire chain is a unified whole, with a complex, may be ambivalent, but, in any case, coherent meaning, not only brings us to a point of resolution; it allows us to navigate through our lives."

But Denby’s focus, propelled by this year’s Academy Award nominated “Babel,” is about movie storytellers with a different impact, leaving “the viewer experiencing reactions before actions, dénouements before climaxes, disillusion before ecstasy, and many other upsetting reversals and discombobulations.”

Just as audiences became accustomed to non-Hollywood endings that refused to give us what we wanted (enemies falling in love, sympathetic characters who were not snatched from the jaws of death), Denby says we’re getting used to structures that bend time.

“All these movies draw on a sophistication about cinema that is now almost universal. We know that a film is not a piece of life; we know that it is something made. And we’re used to being shoved around in time—we may even be doing some of the shoving ourselves.”

Technology makes “new non-narrative movies” possible, for established filmmakers as well as anyone with access to ripping software who wants to create their own structure.

“Twenty-five years ago, the videotape transfer of a film sustained the notion of a movie as a continuous track: you could run it forward or backward, but the film was “printed” on magnetic tape, and you remained on the track. Digital information, on the other hand, can be infinitely manipulated; you can jump from one place to another or cut the movie into pieces. At home, kids create “mashups”—chopping sections out of a feature film, mixing the excerpts with their own material, and posting the result on the Web as a madcap original creation. “

But all that digital time-shifting, may come with a hefty price.

“The danger of instant editing, of course, is not just disordered time sequences but glibness. Some of the big Hollywood action films move so quickly that they eliminate the most rudimentary emotional attachment to the material. It would be terrible if computer editing wiped out the proper emotional resistance to making a cut—the lingering grave affection for a face, a landscape, an interior, even the resonance of an empty space.“

Here’s a filmography of the ”topsy-turvey narratives’ Denby discusses in the piece. You can learn more about them from the Internet Movie Database at imdb.com

Babel
Amores Perros
21 Grams
Adaptation
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Traffic
Syriana
Miami Vice
Betrayal
Pulp Fiction
The Good Shepherd
Un Chien Andalou
The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie
Hiroshima, Mon Amour
Muriel
L’Avventura
Memento
The Lives of Others

Comments

[Space Jams Jordans]

In delay there lies no plenty , Then come kiss me , sweet and twenty , Youth's a stuff that will not endure.
http://www.jordanspacejamssale.com/

[Space Jams Jordans]

In delay there lies no plenty , Then come kiss me , sweet and twenty , Youth's a stuff that will not endure.
http://www.jordanspacejamssale.com/

[Griffey Shoes]

i agree with your views from here.

[Cheap Air Max UK]

Mr Reiss says he has not been surprised by the victims. "People are much more discerning now about how they spend their money and you have to keep moving forward as a brand. If you don't have that sense of uniqueness or give customers what they want, you are going to struggle. You have to be adaptable and understand your customer. It's a tough world out there."

[emporio armani watches]

The flick of the wrist must be hard enough that accidentally triggering the night light is unlikely; reguiring a button press to activate a hands-free system negates any hands-free advantage. I’ve had 3 flix enabled Ironmans and never use the FLIX feature due to the activation requirements.

[Belstaff Outlet]

I am very pleased that my spouse and I should ask. Almost never true for my partner and my knowledge of the exciting co-educational not to mention a new website together to help me and my friends tell anyone, anyone with heart click on a particular nail.

[Jordan Fusion]

But has the last word been said ? Is all hope to be lost ? Is the defeat final No !

[Onitsuka Tiger]

The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for circumstances they want, and if they cannot find them, make them.

[Air Max Fusions]

Do you love life? Then do not squander time; for that's the stuff5 life is made of.

[Onitsuka Tiger]

Such a good writing, or by I saw for the first time. I'm quite happy, you are a good writer!

[armani watch sale]

Advertising and stuff tells us that we have to be attractive. I think it’s wrong, but that’s the way the world is now.

[nike free]

a mother's love never changes.

[nike heels for women]

a mother's love never changes.

[jordan heels]

a new broom sweeps clean.