Fifty Years: Fifty Movies – part three

In three days, I will turn fifty.  Or maybe you could say, I will achieve fifty years old, finishing my 50th year.  To celebrate (at least, on this blog), we’re taking a look back and picking a film from each year of my life that I think is notable. My birthday is June 7, so each film came out in the year that began on that date, according to Wikipedia.

Ten Interesting Non-Linear Movies

Like my post a while ago about time travel stories here, the idea isn’t to list the ten greatest non-linear stories.  Who could claim such a thing?  Especially when I’ve never even seen Rashomon, or Pulp Fiction?  But I’m interested in film and storytelling, and recently I’ve been pondering a bit about the idea of non-linear storytelling. This is a phrase that has a broad range of meaning and an equally diverse selection of potential examples.

Image courtesy of posterize / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Actually, almost every film is non-linear, in the sense that they don’t take place in a continuous uninterrupted flow of time and space.  If we take that a super-strict definition, than you have to go to something like Rope (presented in what is supposedly in one continuous take) or High Noon (which has edits, but takes place in real time) to find something that’s not non-linear.

But usually, that’s not what we mean.