premonition of something that might happen, or
even a psychic projection. Flash-forward is a prob-
lematic element in any film that strives for realism
because it implies that the characters in the film
are somehow seeing the future. Once employed,
flash-forward sends the signal that the movie we
346 CHAPTER 8EDITING
12Flashbacks can help to develop characters Director
Terrence Malick makes a poignant use of flashbacks in The
Thin Red Line(1998; editors: Billy Weber, Leslie Jones, Saar
Klein), his epic account of a crucial World War II battle in
Asia. He knows that the depiction of soldiers—from Homer’s
Iliadto the movies—often includes their longing for home,
wives, and family, a longing for safety and peace—and Malick
uses a series of such flashbacks to develop the characters of
Pvt. John Bell (Ben Chaplin) and his wife, Marty (Miranda
Otto). The flashbacks emphasize how war has interrupted
their deep, idyllic emotional and sexual relationship. In image
[1], talking to Cpl. Geoffrey Fife (Adrien Brody, left), Bell says
that he never touched another woman and wouldn’t feel the
desire to do so; this is followed by a flashback to a romantic,
nighttime image [2] of Marty staring out their bedroom
window, as if longing for him. Such an interpretation would
be romantic, but Bell soon receives a letter from Marty
saying that she is tired of waiting for him and wants a
divorce so that she can marry a man with whom she has
fallen in love. Here, the flashback is used ironically, to
contrast John’s illusions about the past—virtually his reason
for living and fighting in the war—with the reality of the
present wartime conditions.
Flash-forward clues us in on a murder yet to happen
The flash-forward creates an ironic context in Sydney
Pollack’s They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?(1969; editor:
Fredric Steinkamp), a melodrama about the marathon dance
contests that were a fad in the 1930s during the Great
Depression. Gloria (Jane Fonda) and Robert (Michael
Sarrazin)—who meet and agree to dance together in the
competition—want to win this grueling ordeal for the prize
money and are seemingly in it until the bitter end, or almost.
They are ill-matched: Gloria is a self-destructive aspiring
actress; Michael, who was deeply affected as a boy by seeing
a horse shot after breaking its leg, is the more optimistic.
The colorful contest is punctuated several times with highly
stylized flash-forwards—shot in an entirely different mise-en-
scène and color—depicting Robert in jail or at his trial for
murder. They suggest that there is more to this easygoing
young man than we expect. In image [1], we see the couple,
physically and emotionally exhausted from an ordeal that has
run for more than 1,000 hours; image [2] is a flash-forward to
Robert being sentenced to murder. We don’t know if this trial
really happened—the blue-gray image seems expressionistic,
even surreal—and we don’t know whom he has murdered.
Soon, the couple—who have fallen for one another—walk
out, disillusioned that the contest is dishonest. In the final
scene, Gloria takes a pistol from her purse and attempts to
kill herself; unable to pull the trigger, she asks Robert to do
it—and he does! The flash-forwards, eerie as they are,
foreshadow an action that contradicts everything we know
about Robert, whose final words are those of the title.12