Readings · Plot DNA
4 Months 3 Weeks and 2 Days, at one end: strictly linear. Last Year at Marienbad, at the other: heavily non-linear. Time Flow: that is the distance between them.
Time Flow
Time Flow is the reading that asks whether a film tells its story in the order it happened, or lets time fold, loop and double back.
From one end to the other
- 4 Months 3 Weeks and 2 DaysOne woman helps her friend through an illegal abortion across a single day in Ceaușescu's Romania — and the ordinary world turns, hour by hour, into a machine of quiet terror.
- Birds of PassageThe birth of Colombia's drug trade told from inside an indigenous Wayuu family, where ancient codes of honour and omen collide with narco money — and a whole way of life dismantles itself from within.
- City of GodTwo decades in a Rio favela told at the speed of a bullet — children inheriting guns from children, and the one boy who might photograph his way out.
- My Golden DaysA middle-aged man excavates the girl who defined him, and the film discovers that memory doesn't recall the past so much as rebuild it — lit gold and slightly untrue.
- Last Year at MarienbadA man insists to a woman that they met and loved a year ago; she doesn't remember, or won't — and the film refuses to tell either of them, or you, what is real.
Trailer
Most films move like a clock. A few move like memory. Time Flow tells you which kind you are about to watch: a story that runs straight, or one that folds, loops and doubles back until you are no longer sure when you are. If you like to piece the order together yourself, this is the reading to open. Last Year at Marienbad is one film that sits at that end.
Feature
Most films hand you events in the order they happened, and you never think about the order. Some make the order part of the story. One end of this reading is marked "Strictly linear". The other is marked "Heavily non-linear". 4 Months 3 Weeks and 2 Days sits at the first end. Last Year at Marienbad sits at the second. Most films live between the two, keeping time in line and bending it once, at the moment it counts. The reading is about sequence and nothing else. A film can jump between years and stay easy to follow. A film can run in a straight line and be hard to read. So describe the feeling of the order, not the plot. Both ends have their pleasures. One lets you settle in and follow. The other asks you to lean in and put the pieces together. Try a sentence like the one below.
A film that jumps around in time and trusts me to piece it together.
Making of
Time Flow covers chronology: whether the story arrives in order, and how far the film scrambles, repeats or loops it. It does not cover how confusing a film is, how many stories it tells, or whether its world is real. Those belong to other readings. Every one of the 275 films is read on it, and every reading has a sentence that says why. With an account you can open that sentence, check it against the film and disagree. Every other film is read against the 5 calibration films and checked. The limit is plain. The reading tells you how time is arranged. It cannot tell you whether the arrangement works, or whether it will please you. Two careful viewers can place one film a little differently, and the sentence is there so you can see why this one was placed where it was. It reads the film as a whole, not one scene.