I'm always fascinated by parallel story lines, be it in television or film.
Here are some of my favorite examples:
"It's the sense of touch. In any real city, you walk, you know? You brush past people, people bump into you. In L.A., nobody touches you. We're always behind this metal and glass. I think we miss that touch so much, that we crash into each other, just so we can feel something. "
This is the opening voice over of the film - a film in which we meet multiple characters, all of whom live in different worlds and do different types of work - but we see that the characters start to overlap. As the opening monologue suggests: the characters crash into each other.
We meet the various characters very early in the film, and as the plot advances, we start to notice each of them in each other's story.
The film is tied together like several strands of string that are being woven into canvas, and by the final frames of the film, the canvas is complete.
As you watch Crash you feel as though you have a balcony seat, overlooking the entire city of L.A. - and you watch as the characters move through the city. You start to predict at what cross-street they'll meet and what will happen when they do.
Sliding Doors is, essentially, a romantic comedy. But it's a romantic comedy with a clever twist. It's really two romantic comedies, two separate stories, separated by two 'sliding doors' -- the sliding doors of a London tube train, which determine the fate of the film's lead character played by Gwenyth Paltrow.
The story splits, and we see what happens if she catches the train, and what happens if she doesn't.
This film is based on fantasy -- we're seeing parallel universes, not parallel stories. It sounds confusing, but it's all made very clear because of the way the film is constructed. The setup is very straightforward and the two story lines are easy to delineate.
The script itself is commendable for it's timely romantic comedy style - it is a 'Four Weddings and Funeral' era British film, so it follows the format of similar films that were popular in the mid 1990's. It's a rather 'blank verse' approach to storytelling: Girl meets guy, girls likes guy, guy does something that displeases guy, guy and girl separate, girl and guy reunite the rain.
The true artistry in the writing and directing of the film is the seamless way the filmmakers move between the two parallel scenarios, and tell the two stories in such a convincing way, that as an audience, you don't know which is fact and which is fiction.
Collision is a five-part mini series produced by ITV(UK) about a road accident, involving six cars, in which three people are killed and several are injured.
The detective assigned to investigate the accident is deliberate but flawed, having just returned from a leave of absence following his wife's death. The investigation turns up a deep trail of evidence and you start to piece together how the drivers and passengers of the vehicles are somehow linked, and how some of the stories overlap.
Since this is a five part mini series, the information is revealed very intricately, and the far reaching story sets up a number of small mysteries that are all neatly tied together by the final episode.
This film is a cult favorite, directed by Robert Altman, in which a series of short stories and characters are tied together.
In this film, the script is broken apart, and the plot is pieced together more methodically. The characters exist in a slightly heightened reality, and the soulless Los Angeles setting is a perfect backdrop for the story.
The credibility of this piece lies in the acting and directing. There are very clear choices made to tell the story from various angles and see the plot develop through the various multiple locations and characters. The clever weaving of the various stories is credited to the screenwriter Frank Barydt.
If Altman's Short Cuts moves from one story to another like sharp slices through celluloid, then Stephen Daldry's The Hours moves like a carefully rehearsed ballet.
There is music and melody to the transitions in The Hours, which is a story told across three generations, three women all linked by the Virginia Woolf novel 'Mrs Dalloway'
The artistry in this film can be found in the acting, the directing, the screenplay and the editing. The editing especially should be commended because of the expert way in which you move between the three stories -- the moments at which you transition from one place to another, and the almost romantic connection between these three women is stunning to watch. It's almost as if the story has no edge to it, and the plot continues on after you cut and transition to a new scene. There's a believability to the characters that suggests their lives go much further than the context of the film.
The script uses a series of touchstones to tie the three women together, each of them are handling food at one point, and as we cut, we see each of them preparing a meal. We see them looking at their own reflection, in a stream, in a mirror and we cut between them as if the moment were simultaneous.
Narration and voice over overlaps, and in some cases one character is narrating another's action. There are sometimes non-definitive cuts between the three stories that cut back and forth much like conventional cinema, suggesting characters are in the same room -- the same time and space -- when in fact they aren't...
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