I watched the movie Sweet Land last night that had me thinking of narrative time jumps. The movie’s very good, but I almost didn’t get past the first 10-15 minutes. For the first five or so, the present overlaid with the past both in flashes of dialogue and images. Then, to make matters worse, the story began to jump between the present, the past of the late ’60’s (or so said the synopsis on the back of the movie), and the past of the early ’20’s. I had a hard time anchoring myself until it picked up the 1920’s storyline and began to follow that through.
Time jumps in stories are always very difficult for me to follow unless they’re a prologue or some similar past that leaps once and then follows a present storyline. I’m a very linear thinker. I write from beginning to end (save for one); that’s just how the story naturally evolves for me, so to ask me to keep up with constant back and forth between three separate times is confusing. I view them as three different stories entirely, even though they’re all referring to the original, the 1920’s story. For me, they have different characters, different themes, and different endings. I see the connection between them, the common thread, but they still remain separate. Even flashbacks can throw me off unless they’re handled really well.
I haven’t decided yet if the 1960’s storyline and the present storyline were entirely necessary to the plot. The movie is based on a short story by Will Weaver, “A Gravestone Made of Wheat“, which I haven’t read yet, so I don’t know if that’s how it was presented in literature though I’m assuming so. Maybe in the story it was necessary, but I go back and forth about the movie adaptation. There’s no clear POV in the 1960’s story, and the present story is just a way of rounding off a straight-up romance in a “literary” fashion, which I say with no ill will. Some people like to cut at the HEA, while some like the bittersweet. I’d have preferred if the movie focused entirely on the 1920’s storyline, but it’s still a wonderful film.
I don’t see this schizophrenic time jump in too many novels, though. I wonder if it has anything to do with the media, as I’m sure it’s easier to manage rapid back-and-forth with images rather than words. This, in turn, makes me wonder if that’s similiar to how authors who use the cut-and-paste writing method see their story. I see mine in emotions, for example. People and actions are colored in auras of various intensity, which evolve and change as the story grows. Do people who write scenes regardless of their place in the story see flashes of detailed images and sounds?
Oh, the ponders I ponder.
