Nonlinear (arts)
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Nonlinear_(arts)".

Nonlinear narrative or disrupted narrative is a narrative technique, sometimes used in literature, film and other narratives, wherein events are portrayed out of chronological order. It is often used to mimic the structure and recall of human memory but has been applied for other reasons as well. The term has a slightly different meaning in the context of video games, where it refers to the possibility of narrating different stories depending on the player's actions in the game.

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Literature

Beginning a narrative in medias res (Latin: "into the middle of things") began in ancient times as an oral tradition and was established as a convention of epic poetry with Homer's Iliad in the 8th century BC. The technique of narrating most the story in flashback also dates back to the Indian epic, the Mahabharata, around the 5th century BC. Several medieval Arabian Nights tales such as "Sinbad the Sailor", "The City of Brass" and "The Three Apples" also had nonlinear narratives employing the in medias res and flashback techniques.1

From the late 1800s and early 1900s, modernist novelists Joseph Conrad, Virginia Woolf, Ford Madox Ford, Marcel Proust, and William Faulkner experimented with narrative chronology and abandoning linear order.2

Examples of nonlinear novels are: Laurence Sterne's The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (1759-67), Thomas Carlyle's Sartor Resartus (ca. 1833), Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights (1847), James Joyce's Ulysses (1922) and Finnegans Wake (1939), William S. Burroughs' Naked Lunch (1959), Joseph Heller's Catch-22 (1961), Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five (1969), Milorad Pavić's Dictionary of the Khazars (1988), Irvine Welsh's Trainspotting (1993) and Carole Maso's Ava: a novel (1993).3

Film

Defining nonlinear structure in film is, at times, difficult. Films may use extensive flashbacks or flashforwards within a linear storyline, while nonlinear films often contain linear sequences.4 Orson Welles' Citizen Kane (1941), influenced structurally by The Power and the Glory (1933), and Akira Kurosawa's Rashomon (1950) use a non-chronological flashback narrative that is often labeled nonlinear.

Silent and early era

Experimentation with nonlinear structure in film dates back to the silent film era, including D.W. Griffith's Intolerance (1916) and Abel Gance's Napoléon (1927).5 Nonlinear film emerged from the French avant-garde in 1929 with Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dali's Un Chien Andalou (English: An Andalusian Dog). The surrealist film jumps into fantasy and juxtaposes images, granting the filmmakers an ability to create statements about the Church, art, and society that are left open to interpretation.6 Buñuel and Dali's L'Âge d'or (1930) (English: The Golden Age) also uses nonlinear concepts. The revolutionary Russian filmmakers Sergei Eisenstein, Vsevolod Pudovkin, and Alexander Dovzhenko also experimented with the possibilities of nonlinearity. Eisenstein's Strike (1925) and Dovzhenko's Earth (1930) hint at a nonlinear experience.7 English director Humphrey Jennings used a nonlinear approach in his World War II documentary Listen to Britain (1942).7

Post-war

Jean-Luc Godard's work since 1959 was also important in the evolution of nonlinear film. Godard famously stated, "I agree that a film should have a beginning, a middle and an end but not necessarily in that order".8 Godard's Week End (French: Le weekend) (1968), as well as Andy Warhol's Chelsea Girls (1966), defy linear structure in exchange for a chronology of events that is seemingly random.9 Alain Resnais experimented with narrative and time in his films Hiroshima Mon Amour (1959), Last Year at Marienbad (1961), and Muriel (1963). Federico Fellini defined his own nonlinear cinema with the films La strada (1954), La dolce vita (1960), 8½ (1963), Satyricon (1969), and Roma (1972). Nicolas Roeg's films, including Performance (1968), Walkabout (1971), Don't Look Now (1973), The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976), and Bad Timing (1980) are characterized by a nonlinear approach.10 Other experimental nonlinear filmmakers include Michelangelo Antonioni, Peter Greenaway, Chris Marker, Agnès Varda, and Raúl Ruiz.11

In the United States, Robert Altman carried the nonlinear motif in his films, including McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971), Nashville (1975), The Player (1992), Short Cuts (1993), and Gosford Park (2001).12 Woody Allen embraced the experimental nature of nonlinear narrative in Annie Hall (1977), Interiors (1978), and Stardust Memories (1980).

1990s and 2000s

In the 1990s, Quentin Tarantino influenced a tremendous growth in nonlinear films with Pulp Fiction (1994).6 Other important nonlinear films include Atom Egoyan's Exotica (1994), Terrence Malick's The Thin Red Line (1998), Paul Thomas Anderson's Magnolia (1999), and Karen and Jill Sprecher's Thirteen Conversations About One Thing (2001).6 David Lynch experimented with nonlinear narrative and surrealism in Lost Highway (1997), Mulholland Dr. (2001), and Inland Empire (2006).

Into the 2000s, some filmmakers have returned to the use of nonlinear narrative repeatedly. Steven Soderbergh in Schizopolis (1996), Out of Sight (1998), The Limey (1999), Full Frontal (2002), and Solaris (2002). Christopher Nolan in Following (1998), Memento (2001), and The Prestige (2006). Memento, with its fragmentation and reverse chronology, has been described as characteristic of moving towards postmodernism in contemporary cinema.13 Richard Linklater used nonlinear narrative in Slacker (1991), Waking Life (2001), and A Scanner Darkly (2006); Gus Van Sant in Elephant (2003), Last Days (2005), and Paranoid Park (2007). Hong Kong auteur Wong Kar-wai explored nonlinear storylines in the films Days of Being Wild (1991), Ashes of Time (1994), Chungking Express (1994), In the Mood for Love (2000), and 2046 (2004). Takashi Shimizu's Japanese horror series, Ju-on, brought to America as The Grudge, is also nonlinear in its storytelling.

Timeline of nonlinear films

1910s–1980s

1990s

2000s

Television

Japanese anime series sometimes present their plot in nonlinear order, for example, The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, Yami to Bōshi to Hon no Tabibito, Touka Gettan, and (partly) Boogiepop Phantom and Ergo Proxy.

Video games

In video games, nonlinear refers to a game that has more than one possible plotline and ending, leaving the gamer to take the path that most suits their style of play. This increases replay value, as players must often beat the game several times to get the whole story. Computer role-playing games, e.g. Fallout, often contain multiple paths which the player can take since the beginning of the game. An Example of This is Sega's Spin off game, "Shadow the Hedgehog".

Some video games mimic the film nonlinearity by presenting a single plot in chronologically distorted way instead of letting the player determine the story flow themselves. The first-person shooter Tribes: Vengeance is an example of this, another is Sega's "Sonic Adventure".

See also

References

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External links
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