To define "nonlinear storytelling" is a discussion in itself, isn't it?

Many people call "Pulp fiction" and its inspiration "The Killing", nonlinear, but
both have a beginning, middle and end to the story. It's just told out of order.

My film "dark crimes" takes the same format as "D.O.A." (1950). It starts at
the end and then the entire story is revealed in flashback. But it still has a
beginning, middle and end to the story. A lot of the biography movies do
that.

I recently saw "Code Unknown". It's title in France translates to "Incomplete
Tales of Several Journeys" - it didn't seem to have a beginning, middle and
end to the story just as the title suggests. But I can't, right off the top of
my head, think of any other truly, nonlinear story.

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The aim of an argument or discussion should not be victory, but progress.
Joseph Joubert, essayist (1754-1824)

I guess a story where you are telling about the character. You could do loosely connecting memories or flashbacks but with no real "now." More like jumping back and forth with each scene or sequence revealing a different aspect of the story, and the only reason to show them in the particular order that you'd pick (which is not necessarily chronological) is because connecting the scenes in that way controls the emotion that is felt and the significance of each theme shown. What i mean is, you could show a scene where a little girl is riding in a car in the back seat. That would be nothing, nothing associated with it... but if you had just shown a picture of a grotesque accident on a road, then now we see the girl, we might realize the car we saw was the one she was riding in - boom, there's your significance.

I really think I'll play around with nonlinear a bit. Not to be artsy or anything, but because I think it could really be creative and fun to do.

I don't think that some flashbacks in a movie automatically constitute nonlinear storytelling, it's more the way the story unfolds. Pulp Fiction of course is a good example, an even better one with respect to nonlinearity is "11:14", where different aspects of the story are told as they are seen through the eyes of five different characters -- not interleaved, as we are used to, but episodically one after another. So after one character's story has been told, the movie starts right at the beginning with the next character's POV. The whole story is structured kinda like a moebius strip, so there's a well-defined beginning and end and major plot points in between, but it's rather different from classical storytelling.

Another great one would be "Memento", which tells the story in reverse order, so that the end is actually the beginning, and vice versa.

Excellent example, Arnino. I remember really liking "11:14".
More recently "Vantage Point" did the same thing. I guess
any movie that jumps around with the timeline is considered
"nonlinear" - which makes sense.

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The aim of an argument or discussion should not be victory, but progress.
Joseph Joubert, essayist (1754-1824)

I saw Vantage Point recently but actually I didn't like it - not only because of the obvious plotholes, but because it kinda gives up its premise of nonlinear storytelling towards the end, morphing into a rather common action flick. But in the first half, the nonlinearity is really similar to "11:14".

I agree that 'nonlinear storytelling' is a contradiction, and technically, impossible to achieve. Even if you show incomplete stories, like in the movie that CI cited, it is a complete film. It has a beginning, middle and end, even if they aren't a traditional version of such.

But I suppose the growing interactivity element could create a non-linear story. Sort of a video version of 'choose your own path' books.

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I agree that 'nonlinear storytelling' is a contradiction, and technically, impossible to achieve.

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Well, I guess that depends on how you define storytelling. From my point of view, "11:14" absolutely tells a story.

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Originally posted by Arnino
Well, I guess that depends on how you define storytelling. From my point of view, "11:14" absolutely tells a story.

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And it tells a story in a nonlinear way. So I can see it being called "nonlinear storytelling"

Just what I meant 🙂

very interesting discussion - i am picking my brains and trying to see if i have a point...??? I think the non-linear story telling as in the tarantino films is just a deconstruction of the linear story, shuffled and finally laid out in a transversal(?lateral) mode...but in the end, it reads as a linear story because as many of you said, it has a beginning, middle and an end, i would add it ought to be linear in order to make sense...not sure our rational brains would integrate anything non linear.

...uuuh, it's late, i hope it makes sense?8D?

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I think it really is a question of interpretation. Take art for example. If you have a hundred people look at the same painting you will probably get a hundred different interpretations. I think it's just a matter of that. The movies mentioned above could be nonlinear, or they might not be. There really is no infrastructure saying if it is or if it isn't. It seems pretty close (and forgive me, its been a while since i've been in school) to the discussion of post-modernism.