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Watched it last night. Great performances all around. Penn's was head-and-shoulders above the overstated, over-hyped one he gave in Mystic River. But, what purpose did the fragmented structure serve? What artistic purpose? Ran as a linear narrative, would the film have been less compelling? I dont know. Certainly, though, the additional demands on the viewers' attention created by the film's structure create an artificial measure of depth and complexity. And the narration, from which the film takes its name: who cares? It occupied maybe two or three minutes of film time. Why do we need some "meditation" (random thoughts) on the 21-gram myth and its weight equivalencies (5 nickels, a candy bar, etc.)? More false depth. Whats frustrating is that it all distracts from a film that might have been all the more compelling without it. Why not trust the performances and interrelationships as sufficient in themselves? This is covert Hollywoodism masquerading as "artfulness." Just as cynical at bottom.
Follow Ups:
The film is plenty deep. The editing is a distraction because it attempts to add weight to the material and because it doesn't really work makes it seem less than what it really is.The film is not really about 21 gram mythos...it is about the relationship of life's interconnectedness. Penn is saved and has a need to know the meaning of life - why he and not another(the husband and child) is spared from the reaper. The notion of God and the promise of religion from the Del Torro sequences. The strength of the acting and that story is strong enough without the editing ploys.
And really if it's not considered art because the director does not have the answer to the meaning of life or the value of religion - then what is it? I think the answer, at least in the director's mind, IS provided. God is a figmant of the imagination a false prophet. SOmething bad happens and you fluke out and live where you should have dies you believe in God. Something bad happens and you dump him like a hot potato.
Posted by Bulkington (A) on April 19, 2004 at 07:29:02But, what purpose did the fragmented structure serve? What artistic purpose?
.......... I suppose it could have been the director's attempt to show the relation (or randomness) between events past, present and future in one's life. However, I came away with the feeling that it was simply "art" for art's sake.
Ran as a linear narrative, would the film have been less compelling?
...... I would say so, yes. Take away the displaced time technique and we are left we a pretty thin story.
I dont know. Certainly, though, the additional demands on the viewers' attention created by the film's structure create an artificial measure of depth and complexity.
...... Agreed. After a while it felt spoon-fed.
A film as faken as one can be.PS: For curiosity I just receive " Les Cahiers du Cinema " ( France best and longest movie critic mag. ) and your critic is still kind if you compare.....
abstracts because of how they worked, as well?
A person should judge a work of art by how they react to it...viscerally. If one comes with all these pre-judgments, i.e. no narration, no time-looping, well...why stop there? Let's eliminate all artistic variations and be left with ONE way to interpret "reality."
Personally, I found it fascinating. You get up, have coffee, kiss the wife, hug your child...with no thought that a catastrophic event may be just around the corner. Present and past are trumped by the future. Doesn't seem fair, does it?
I drive more carefully, myself, since that movie...
Wrong.If one comes with all these pre-judgments, i.e. no narration, no time-looping, well...why stop there?
Don't disparage. Read my posts. I don't like most narration because on the whole I find it to be a short-cut that undercuts the inherent dramatic strength of the medium. I think that sometimes it's used well; but much of the time it isn't and often it's outright redundant and functions to the detriment of or with little faith in what's on screen. That's not a pre-judgement.
As for my objection to the film's "time-looping": they're specific to this film. Don't generalize. You're arguing with a straw-man.
Let's eliminate all artistic variations and be left with ONE way to interpret "reality."
Yikes! Again, my criticism is of this particular film, not all films that would employ its style. You or the director can claim that the stylistic choice interprets reality in a particular way. What I'm saying is that I don't think the style makes good on that claim. My visceral response to the film's structure, when the film had come to an end, was that it was unnecessarily fragmented and that that fragmentation amounted to a trick suggesting additional depth that the actors might have provided by themselves had they not had to share the stage with it. I've yet to be convinced otherwise.
Apocolypse Now
Platoon
American BeautyThese films would have suffered sans narration. I'm sure there are plenty more.
BladerunnerO Lucky Man
Moby Dick
"And then, as it must to all men, Death came to Charles Foster Kane.""The magnificence of the Ambersons began..."
There has been at least one filmmaker who knew how to use narration.
Also Kubrick's "The Killing" and (the beginning of) "Dr. Strangelove" and "A Clockwork Orange" and "Barry Lyndon".
nt
Hey den.
______________________________
Stranger than that, we're alive!Whatever you think it's more than that, more than that.
-Incredible String Band
I think, I think I am, I think.
Of course you are my bright little star.
I've miles
And miles
Of files
Pretty files of your forefather's fruit
And now to suit our
Great computer
You're magnetic ink.
I'm more than that, I know I am, at least, I think I must be.
keep as cool as you can
face piles of trials with smiles
it riles them to believe
that you perceive the whip they wield
and keep on thinking freeI feel like I Left something out.
I assume you know that he considered this but eventually discarded the idea.
;^)
I think becomes twice the film when you watch it while pretending the narration isn't there. Take the opening. Everything the narrator describs is exactly what is happening on screen. Why do we need him? That he leads a sad, suburban existence and that he's wearied by it is clear. The narration adds nothing to that film, as far as I'm concerned, apart from "brightening" it. Take the narrator out and it becomes much more dark and the ending more unsettling.I think narration serves Apocolypse Now well. To provide the same information to the viewers dramatically instead would have been unmangeable, would have required dramatic exchanges contrived purely for exposition.
I need to revisit Platoon.
Spacey's voice is the critical piece: it's "welrschmerz" incarnate. The cold-bloodedness in his expression shows the power of the spoken over the written word (try reading "Hamlet" and then just listen to...Richard Burton's interpretation on cd).
All your impassioned argument aside, you do seem quite prejudiced.
I think American Beauty provides an interesting test-case, though. Next time you watch it, ignore the narration as best you can and think about how different (not necessarily better, but certainly different) the movie becomes without it. I'd like someday to get a hold of editing equipment to make a narratorless American Beauty (and a narratorless Sheltering Sky, and original theatrical release of Blade Runner--I think the director's cut is superior for lacking narration, but some of the violence has been edited out and looks abridged, to me at least, at those moments).
Next time I watch American Beauty, I will try to imagine it without the narrative. An interesting option for DVD releases of such movies would be to allow the viewer to omit the narration. The scene in Apoc Now in which Martin Sheen is drunk in his hotel room would definitely suffer without the narrative.
I agree. One of the many briliant touches here is that we are told the entire story at the outset of the film, just like in the newsreel in "Citizen Kane". There's even a quick flash forward shot showing Willard coming up out of the water, something we see again at the end.
The way the story is told, the viewer is forced to participate in unweaving it, thus becoming much more involved than what he would if it was told in a lineal way.Have you ever seen a good hypnotist at work? If you ever have, then you shall have noticed how what he says is not so important as how he says it -voice intonation, gestures...- and how by doing it that way he is able to put the subject under a deep trance, making him become so involved with the story heīs weaving for him that he loses any touch with what is happening around him: he is living an altered state of conscience and, when at it, suggestions made by the hypnotist go straight to the deepest of his mind, without being filtered by his rational brain...
I have seen a woman in a surgical room having her nose broken by the surgeon who was performing facial surgery on her, and she had been given no anesthetics, just hypnosis: I saw her blood pouring from her nose, while she smiled and swallowed that part of it which went back to her throat, tasting it as the cold Coca-Cola the hypnotist was telling her it was... and, once that surgery was done, she simply stood up and left the surgical room walking on her own feet, never feeling any pain.
Under our usual state of consciousness, things seem to happen under a lineal way, and thatīs the way we usually remember them. But life is much more than a state of consciousness, and things donīt happen to us in the orderly way we think: what the authors -writer and director- have done when telling this whole story the way the have chosen to is telling us, and forcing us to accept, that life itself only gains a sense at the very end of it; and those two or three minutes at the end of the film, when an ailing Sean Penn is voicing his naked reflections about the meaning and sense of life -his or any otherīs- are crucial to give the whole story its full meaning: 21 grams, thatīs what can be seen from outside, no more..., and so much for he who sees it with one foot on the other side!
Maybe you havenīt liked the way that story was told. But I am sure that you have come back to it no few times since the moment the lights were turned on at the theatre..., as I did.
Thatīs how I see it. And I agree: everybody in it played as if their own life was in it. A truly exceptional film, one not to be forgotten.
Those were my 2 cents
Regards
BF
The way the story is told, the viewer is forced to participate in unweaving it, thus becoming much more involved than what he would if it was told in a lineal way.I totally agree. I just can't shake this feeling like a needless or cynical trick.
Under our usual state of consciousness, things seem to happen under a lineal way, and thatīs the way we usually remember them. But life is much more than a state of consciousness, and things donīt happen to us in the orderly way we think: what the authors -writer and director- have done when telling this whole story the way the have chosen to is telling us, and forcing us to accept, that life itself only gains a sense at the very end of it; and those two or three minutes at the end of the film, when an ailing Sean Penn is voicing his naked reflections about the meaning and sense of life -his or any otherīs- are crucial to give the whole story its full meaning: 21 grams, thatīs what can be seen from outside, no more..., and so much for he who sees it with one foot on the other side!
I'd buy this if the film were entirely from Penn's perspective. It's not. I'm not objecting to its non-linearity per se, I'm just not sure the the film justifies its own choice of style.
I find it personally interesting, though, that I could deem a film worthy of re-viewing when I have such fundamental objections to it.
And Ulysses could've 'just' been about a day in Dublin...why all the fancy complications? There's nothing essential about 'a day in Dublin' that warrants digressions in nine different styles of English, or a fantastical ball attended by women named after trees.It's made, it's in the world, the structure is essential by virtue of the fact that: that's how it's structured. I think a better argument could be made that linear narrative is a cynical, needless trick. Every film should come up with a new structure.
Or, how about this: the connection people have to one another is inherently fractured and gapful; a linear telling of the same story would come down to some trite, six-degrees nonsense. It's a fairly implausible premise if taken as a straightforward story. Fracturing the narrative pushes the allegorical function of things to the fore; we have to construct the action ourselves. Memory is fractured, thought is fractured, and the lives of the people involved were broken, and each of them were in fact trying to piece them together.
I could understand this suspicion that it's a 'cynical' trick if it had some 'cynical' end. But Mel Gibson didn't make it. It wasn't the creation of a load of studio hacks. So where's the cynicism?
______________________________
Stranger than that, we're alive!Whatever you think it's more than that, more than that.
-Incredible String Band
why all the fancy complications? There's nothing essential about 'a day in Dublin' that warrants digressions in nine different styles of English, or a fantastical ball attended by women named after trees.You're right. Ulysses wasn't just about a day in Dublin. And there are reasons for its digressions in style, and those reasons, though many would disagree, generally aren't (merely) self-indulgence.
It's made, it's in the world, the structure is essential by virtue of the fact that: that's how it's structured.
Then we need not have this board, critical discussions, or criticism at all. Because things are essential by virtue of their being what in fact they are. Why is Mel Gibson not protected by this same reasoning?
I think a better argument could be made that linear narrative is a cynical, needless trick. Every film should come up with a new structure.
I'd like to hear that argument. In any case, restructuring the narrative should serve some sort of artistic function, should, in my mind, serve the content in some essential way (as should linear narration), just as free verse should be more than prose arranged perfunctorily on the page. Maybe it does in 21 Grams. I don't see it, though I've already expressed a desire to revisit the film again to reconsider. Will I change my mind? I don't know. I've been greeted by invective and tautology so far, which hasn't done much to convince me otherwise.
Or, how about this: the connection people have to one another is inherently fractured and gapful;
Agreed. But does the structure of 21 Grams really work to this end?
a linear telling of the same story would come down to some trite, six-degrees nonsense. It's a fairly implausible premise if taken as a straightforward story.
I think that's possible, and that's why I'm suspicious that the structure, at bottom, serves merely to conceal this fact.
Fracturing the narrative pushes the allegorical function of things to the fore; we have to construct the action ourselves. Memory is fractured, thought is fractured, and the lives of the people involved were broken, and each of them were in fact trying to piece them together.
Neat. I'd like to see the movie you're describing. I just don't happen to think 21 Grams is it. That's my point. That's my criticism.
I could understand this suspicion that it's a 'cynical' trick if it had some 'cynical' end. But Mel Gibson didn't make it. It wasn't the creation of a load of studio hacks. So where's the cynicism?
But so what. The Passion has been made, it's in the world (this sounds so ... Biblical), and all its elements are essential by virtue of the fact that those are the elements of which it is comprised....
there are reasons for its digressions in style, and those reasons, though many would disagree, generally aren't (merely) self-indulgenceParse the difference. The reasons one gives for doing this or that, as an artist, can be 'justified' by any number things, but the decision to do this or that is, I think, finally based in self-satisfaction.
Then we need not have this board, critical discussions, or criticism at all. Because things are essential by virtue of their being what in fact they are. Why is Mel Gibson not protected by this same reasoning?
Who said he's protected? You're asking for some transcendental derivation of the film's structure; maybe there isn't one. So what? How does it function anyway, in lieu of that? Why isn't it 'valid' to pick some elements almost at random (even though this isn't what the director did) and then see how they fit together? David Lynch has no idea why he does the things he does. He believes in angels. Should any analysis of his films proceed from the fact that he believes in angels?
Why must we necessarily begin and end with the artist's intention? "Why did you structure it this way?" "I dunno. It looked cool." That's not even his explanation, but does that preclude any further consideration?
You're not willing to proceed speculatively from matters of fact to matters of value, you're insisting that there must, by law, be some justification of the structure before you're even willing to engage the fact that that is just how it is structured, and to try and tease out how that works for the film and doesn't. And you're reason for wanting someone to convince you is because you suspect the director is being 'cynical.' How? What does that mean? That he's playing into the public's demonstrable, slavish taste for alinear, fragmented plot structures? Since when is that a 'popular' or formulaic convention? What's 'cynical' about it? Do you just mean 'gimmicky'? But why 'gimmicky'? Because it's unusual? Why shouldn't each and every film that uses a linear plot be required to justify its use of linearity? Do you find the director's explanation unconvincing? Isn't that really how we do tell stories? What kind of explanation would satisfy you?restructuring the narrative should serve some sort of artistic function, should, in my mind, serve the content in some essential way (as should linear narration), just as free verse should be more than prose arranged perfunctorily on the page
The very idea that the narrative has been 'restructured' is prejudicial. The idea that any 'deviant' narrative structure must justify itself vis a vis the default mode of 'linear' narrative (which, I suspect you know, is fraught with metaphysical connundra), is limiting.
The function it serves is immanent to the story itself. There isn't some isomimetic relationship between the plot and the structure, as there is in Memento, which I think is a lesser film. You spend time not knowing what's going on, the film proceeds the way one's recall of one's own life does. You have to correlate and correct different bits, and your internal sense of where you're 'at' in the plot is constantly shifting. Isn't the subjective experience of that interesting enough for you? Wouldn't it be far more 'cynical' or gimmicky if, a la Memento, there was some simple, wink-wink, it's structured this way because it has this one-to-one relationship with the content? Who needs that?the structure, at bottom, serves merely to conceal this fact
Isn't that a bit like saying that the drums in 'When the Levee Breaks' are just there to conceal the fact that the song has no beat?
I'd like to see the movie you're describing...
Hmmm...are you sure you weren't high as a kite and watching the movie on a 12" TV screen? Somebody, somewhere in the world, should've months ago hipped you to the fact that this is a film that deserves to be seen in the theater...
But so what. The Passion has been made, it's in the world (this sounds so ... Biblical), and all its elements are essential by virtue of the fact that those are the elements of which it is comprised....
I never said the structure was essential by virtue of---oh wait, yes I did. OK, what I was getting at was sort of IT'S HERE, IT'S QUEER, GET USED TO IT argument. Art works can't be derived from transcendental structures. So to try and determinately ground them is unfair and fruitless. Your charge of cynicism would make more sense if there was a) profit to be made or b) some hackneyed use of conventions that didn't serve to express anything. Personally I think the fact that the movie requires you to work is enough; the juxtaposition of certain particular scenes next to one another, which couldn't be gotten from a linear plot, is affective enough to 'justify' the decision. It fills you alternately with dread and confusion. Like life. If it was structured another way, it would've been a less effective movie, probably. But that is a big 'if,' and I think if we're going to go around crippling artworks on the basis of how they might be weaker if they were significantly different, then that better than my points would render criticism irrelevant.
______________________________
Stranger than that, we're alive!Whatever you think it's more than that, more than that.
-Incredible String Band
Parse the difference. The reasons one gives for doing this or that, as an artist, can be 'justified' by any number things, but the decision to do this or that is, I think, finally based in self-satisfaction.Of course you're right. Any artist should be the first and only intended audience of his own work. Make what you dig. My point: yes, a day in Dublin doesn't "justify" Joyce's stylistic choices, but Ulysses isn't just that, if it's that at all. His stylistic choices are coordinated to his larger artistic and metafictive end. The director of 21 Grams claims that the fragmentary structure of his film was decided upon for artistic/philosophical reasons as well. I don't see it.
Who said he's protected? You're asking for some transcendental derivation of the film's structure; maybe there isn't one. So what? How does it function anyway, in lieu of that? Why isn't it 'valid' to pick some elements almost at random (even though this isn't what the director did) and then see how they fit together?
Who says that isn't valid? I don't think the structure works. Feeling dissatisfied by the structure, I then asked: why did he do that? If the reasons are the reasons he gave in the interview, right now my response is that he wasn't successful. But his reasons give me something to look for on a second viewing, because they point to possible effects that I might have missed and might later pofit from. Were it structured almost at random it might still have worked, it might still result in certain effects. That wasn't how I saw it. I thought it was rather gimmicky attempt at complexity.
David Lynch has no idea why he does the things he does. He believes in angels. Should any analysis of his films proceed from the fact that he believes in angels?
I don't think so.
Why must we necessarily begin and end with the artist's intention?
We mustn't.
"Why did you structure it this way?" "I dunno. It looked cool." That's not even his explanation, but does that preclude any further consideration?
I generally want more than "it looked cool," and while I can also be reasonably satisfied by something merely looking cool, it stops looking so cool if it's being used to distract from short-comings or makes a false bid for sophistication.
You're not willing to proceed speculatively from matters of fact to matters of value, you're insisting that there must, by law, be some justification of the structure before you're even willing to engage the fact that that is just how it is structured, and to try and tease out how that works for the film and doesn't.
No, I want the structure to have an effect that enhances my experience of the film in a meaningful, substantial way. It didn't do that, and so I ask why. I proceeded in exactly the opposite order you describe.
And you're reason for wanting someone to convince you is because you suspect the director is being 'cynical.'
I don't get this. I want someone "to engage the fact that that is just how it is structured, and to try and tease out how that works for the film" because I think it doesn't. Until someone makes an argument for it on those terms, I'm left with my own judgement.
"How? What does that mean? That he's playing into the public's demonstrable, slavish taste for alinear, fragmented plot structures? Since when is that a 'popular' or formulaic convention?"
He's playing into the taste of a above-average film-goer for a measure of challenge and sophistication. As a friend of mine describes the experience of eating at Taco Bell: "the hunger's gone, but nothing's replaced it." I came away feeling that the film's structure functioned more or less like MSG. I'll be watching the film again, though. Maybe I'll change my mind.
What's 'cynical' about it? Do you just mean 'gimmicky'? But why 'gimmicky'? Because it's unusual? Why shouldn't each and every film that uses a linear plot be required to justify its use of linearity?
I think the fact of most films centering on plots dependent on chains of cause and effect is internal justification enough for linearity.
Do you find the director's explanation unconvincing?
I've already said as much.
Isn't that really how we do tell stories?
Sometimes.
What kind of explanation would satisfy you?
I don't know.
The very idea that the narrative has been 'restructured' is prejudicial.
It's a judgement arrived at from my dissatisfaction with the structure as it stands.
The idea that any 'deviant' narrative structure must justify itself vis a vis the default mode of 'linear' narrative (which, I suspect you know, is fraught with metaphysical connundra), is limiting.
Nevertheless unavoidable. The director understands the structure in exactly those terms.
The function it serves is immanent to the story itself. There isn't some isomimetic relationship between the plot and the structure, as there is in Memento, which I think is a lesser film. You spend time not knowing what's going on, the film proceeds the way one's recall of one's own life does. You have to correlate and correct different bits, and your internal sense of where you're 'at' in the plot is constantly shifting. Isn't the subjective experience of that interesting enough for you? Wouldn't it be far more 'cynical' or gimmicky if, a la Memento, there was some simple, wink-wink, it's structured this way because it has this one-to-one relationship with the content? Who needs that?
I agree, Memento is the lesser film. But I don't think 21 Grams functions as you claim it does. Again, the film you're describing sounds good to me; I'm just not sure 21 Grams is it.
Isn't that a bit like saying that the drums in 'When the Levee Breaks' are just there to conceal the fact that the song has no beat?
Only if it were true. Which is to say: to you yes; to me no. I guess.
Hmmm...are you sure you weren't high as a kite and watching the movie on a 12" TV screen? Somebody, somewhere in the world, should've months ago hipped you to the fact that this is a film that deserves to be seen in the theater...
No(!); no; where were you when I needed you?
I never said the structure was essential by virtue of---oh wait, yes I did. OK, what I was getting at was sort of IT'S HERE, IT'S QUEER, GET USED TO IT argument. Art works can't be derived from transcendental structures. So to try and determinately ground them is unfair and fruitless. Your charge of cynicism would make more sense if there was a) profit to be made or b) some hackneyed use of conventions that didn't serve to express anything.
My suspicion is b in the service of a.
Personally I think the fact that the movie requires you to work is enough;
I don't.
the juxtaposition of certain particular scenes next to one another, which couldn't be gotten from a linear plot, is affective enough to 'justify' the decision.
Again, I want to re-watch it. Would it remain as affective for you on repeated viewings?
It fills you alternately with dread and confusion.
But once the novelty has worn off, what then?
Like life.
But did it achieve it in a manner that was lifelike?
If it was structured another way, it would've been a less effective movie, probably. But that is a big 'if,' and I think if we're going to go around crippling artworks on the basis of how they might be weaker if they were significantly different, then that better than my points would render criticism irrelevant.
Usually I find myself asking what would have made an artwork stronger. My point is that the structure of 21 Grams may only make it look stronger. I think it's also possible that it works to the detrement of the film's real strength: the performances and the story told through them.
Your tastes are STUPID!You're an ELITIST SNOB!
The films you like are KAKA!
Ha! Any more smart words, Structure Boy? I thought not. I thought not, indeed.
______________________________
Stranger than that, we're alive!Whatever you think it's more than that, more than that.
-Incredible String Band
You leftist, Marxist, terrorist-loving, havenot whiner! Or go post pictures of yer fuckin' cats over at Central. Sheesh!
f
Quod Erat Demostrandum...Regards
BF
We've got 140 films in our netflix queue.
Thought this might interest you.
21 Grams refers to the weight a person loses at the exact moment of death. I can't say this is a corroborated specific fact. Some doctors have weighed dying people, and at the exact moment of death they lose 21 grams. I wanted to use this as a metaphor about the way a person who dies weighs over the ones that survive them. Sometimes you carry this weight all of your life.That's fine but also rather obvious. Narration in film is a pet-peeve of mine. Being a visual/dramatic medium, I want my films to show rather than tell (there are exceptions, however, Barry Lyndon being one; having recently watched it again, I'm still on the fence with Badlands), and since the cast of 21 Grams demonstrates "the way a person who dies weighs over the ones that survive them" the attempt, via narration, to offer up an explanatory metaphor is pure redundancy to me and tends, as narration often does, to reduce the natural enigmaticness of human relationships to some kind of moralizing thesis statement.
As for the non-linear structure:
This was a choice I took for this story in particular. I always want to find the way a story has to be told. I wasn't intending to write this structure, until I read an old, unfinished novel I wrote when I was 24 or 25 years old. It went back and forth all the time. And I have a short story that has been recently published that also goes back and forth all the time. I think this is the way we tell stories on a daily basis -- we never go linear. We always go back and forth from one point to the other. For example, if I want to tell you how I met my wife, I will never begin at the very beginning I think this is the natural way to tell stories.
Now this is very interesting, and could well be the basis for a film about the telling of a story. It would also be appropriate to a film whose characters were pre-occupied with the past, and 21 Grams is certainly a fit. But I think its frgmentation was indiscriminate in this regard.
My worry was to have emotional continuum. There are huge gaps of narrative information, but I want to have an emotional continuum. I was trying to balance every scene very carefully, and make them contradictory.
Interesting point as well. I'll watch for this when I watch it again, but I'm not sure it would have lost its emotional continuity or the balancing of contradictory scenes were it presented in linear fashion: Penn's suffering and waiting and Watts' domestic bliss standing on either side of Del Toro's struggle to recover from his past (which is how we follow the narrative from the start anyway, but the fragmentation mixes it up with foreglimpses that, again, I'm not sure were necessary). And then tragedy strikes and the initial relationship changes. Etc.
And then I was obsessed with light. Few people notice this, but in the screenplay I tried to have the first 30 pages have a lot of light, day scenes. When the accident is revealed, I want to have dark scenes -- then there are afternoon, dusk, or dawn scenes, where everything is between light and dark, so you can feel how the characters are feeling at that moment. I was also trying to achieve that, so that's why I chose this structure -- to emotionally involve the audience, to mold it narratively, to look for a dialogue with the audience. I always care that the audience has a dialogue with the film.
This is interesting, too, but I'm not sure it bears out. If light and darkness are in sympathy with what's going on on screen, then the film beginning with light ("the first 30 pages"), followed by darkness when the accident occurrs, is contradicted by the natural emotional continuum of the linear narrative as well as by his justification for fragmentation above. All is not rosy in the beginning; all is not dark after. I'm dubious. But I'll watch for it next time around.
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