experience and remember what we have done, and
literally requires us to put the pieces of the puzzle
together. If you have the time and patience to do
that, you’ll find that the puzzle is remarkably well
constructed.
In Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon(1950; screen-
writers: Kurosawa and Shinobu Hashimoto), we
see an innovative variation on the idea of plot order.
The same story—the rape of a woman—is told
from four different points of view: a bandit, the
woman, her husband, and a woodcutter (the only
witness of the rape). Kurosawa’s purpose shows us
that we all remember and perceive differently, thus
challenging our notions of perception and truth.
This approach has influenced many other movies,
including an American remake, Martin Ritt’s The
Outrage(1964, based on Kurosawa and Hashimoto’s
original screenplay) and Bryan Singer’s The Usual
Suspects(1995; screenwriter: Christopher McQuar-
rie). Spanish director-screenwriter Jorge Sánchez-
Cabezudo’s solemn and macabre film The Night of
the Sunflowers(2006) plays with Kurosawa’s idea,
amplifying its moral complexity by presenting its
six-part plot in six overlapping, nonchronological
sections told from six different points of view. The
movie culminates in a dramatic crescendo in which
the director succeeds in putting all the pieces
together.
Despite these experiments with the chronology
of plot events, most narrative films follow a more or
less chronological order.
In discussions of plot order, you will often hear
the term backstory, the experiences of a character
or the circumstances of an event that supposedly
have occurred before the start of the movie’s narra-
tive. Movies like Irréversibleand Mementoutilize a
variation on this narrative convention by telling the
narrative in reverse chronological order, thus
structuring the plot entirely of backstory.
Events
In any plot, events have a logical order, as we’ve dis-
cussed, as well as a logical hierarchy. Some events
are more important than others, and we infer their
relative significance through the director’s selec-
tion and arrangement of details of action, charac-
ter, or setting. This hierarchy consists of (1) the
events that seem crucial to the plot (and thus to the
underlying story) and (2) the events that play a less
crucial or even subordinate role.
The first category includes those major events or
branching points in the plot structure that force
characters to choose between or among alternate
paths. Ridley Scott’s Gladiator(2000; screenwriters:
David Franzoni, John Logan, and William Nicholson)
recounts three stages in the life of Maximus (Russell
Crowe) as he moves from general to slave, slave to
gladiator, and gladiator to savior of the Roman peo-
ple. Soon after the film opens, Emperor Marcus
Aurelius (Richard Harris) dies, a major event that
forces the main character to escape the guards
of the succeeding emperor, Commodus (Joaquin
Phoenix), or be killed by them. Each following stage
in the plot turns on such events, which force Max-
imus to face similar choices.
The second category includes those minor plot
events that add texture and complexity to charac-
ters and actions but are not essential elements
within the narrative. The love that Lucilla (Connie
Nielsen), Commodus’s sister, has long felt for
Maximus—before he was married, during his
marriage, and after his wife was murdered by Com-148 CHAPTER 4 ELEMENTS OF NARRATIVE
Plot order in MementoIn Christopher Nolan’s Memento
(2000), Leonard Shelby (Guy Pearce) suffers from a disorder
that prevents him from forming short-term memories. To
remember details of his life, he takes Polaroid snapshots, jots
notes on scraps of paper, and even tattoos “The Facts” on his
body. The movie’s two-stranded plot order, both chronological
and reverse chronological, likewise challenges us to recall
what we’ve seen and how the parts fit together.