Submitted by kmojena on Sat, 01/26/2008 - 16:19.
So i recently saw Atonement in theaters, and as I was reading over the section on order and duration in Story and Discourse, I kept thinking back to this film because it employed many of the concepts Chatman discusses, particularly with regard to anachrony. The entire film is a bit hard to follow at first if you haven't read the book because many scenes are revisited with slightly different angles at numerous points in the story. Every event is given new light each time it is revisited, and new information is learned that helps the viewer piece together the truth of the plot. Chatman refers to this as repetitive anachrony, which he defines as an anachrony that repeats what has been stated before though with a different slant on original events. In the case of Atonement, the "slant" is the particular character's point of view, which serves a mainly expository function. There are also some ellipses in the movie that jump over a significant amount of time, leaving the viewer to piece together the untold events. One such instance is when the movie quickly transitions from the scene of Robbie's arrest to his departure with the army. read more »
