Time and Structure

Time structure?

Luc God Jean Ard

Today's talks revolved around two poles (until a sneak peek at Robert de Niro's early movies turned out to be a hilarious case of shock and awe) viz: episodic story structure and the nature of time. It is to this latter we should turn.
Godard (ever a fellow for quotes) said 'I like a film to have a beginning, a middle and an end. Not necessarily in that order'. Indeed. Here he is risking conflagration with the famous celluloid/cigarette combo.

When dealing with micro events of our stories, and when we are essentially running parallel tales, it's not the most obvious model to choose to run them one after the other.
On the other hand, a classical parallel cutting ABCDABCDABCD gets monotonous and predictable as well as fragmenting the flow of the storyline.
but nothing and no-one says you have to start at the beginning and finish at the end.
Over the next days we'll be looking at loops of timne, intersecting storylines and a looser relationship of cause to effect.
Films to look at would include the frankly tricksy 'Memento', the lovely intertwining arcs of 'Pulp Fiction' (whatever you may think of the actual stories) and Jim Jarmusch's Moebius-like 'Mystery Train'. The best, slightest (because it really doesn't draw attention to itself as a device, is probably Gus van Sant's 'Elephant'. we should all try to watch that.
the illustration is graphic artist M.C. Escher's take on the one sided strip, often taken as an illustration of a possible cyclic nature of time, the Universe and Everything.
Anyway, have a think about rivers, too. they all flow downhill, but the speed in each part is different, and in some places (eddies, whirlpools, dead arms) it can be still, circular or flowing backwards.
Don't ever ask about Marienbad, though...