These 10 Nonlinear Movies Shuffle Time and Will Blow Your Mind

Not all films have to go straight from point A to point B. Some films are more exciting when they jump around in time, painting a much different picture than the linear format. This filmmaking style can showcase different perspectives of the characters and challenge the perceptions of the audience.

Non-linear movies have the enticing nature of trying to piece everything together, like doing a puzzle with many scattered pieces. The more it comes together, the more satisfying it is when the finale arrives. These are the ten non-inear films worth sorting through regarding how they rearrange time.

10

Dunkirk

Christopher Nolan staged one of the most nerve-wracking depictions of World War II with Dunkirk. The film is split between different members of the Allied forces as they retreat from German territory. The operation is seen from the perspective of the ground troops avoiding Germany’s assault, the naval boats rescuing the soldiers, and the air force providing aerial support.

Nolan takes an interesting approach to Dunkirk by framing three different perspectives with different time windows. The land scenes over the course of a week, the sea scene one day, and the air scenes one hour, diced up throughout as all the allied forces come together in the end. All three perspectives are incredibly intense with gunfire and death, which makes this war seem so real, and how a successful rescue operation is the work of many devoted people.

Dunkirk

Release Date

July 21, 2017

Runtime

106 minutes

Director

Christopher Nolan

9

21 Grams

21 Grams, the title inspired by the 21-gram experiment about determining the weight of the human soul, explores the tragic lives of three characters connected in different ways. Paul Rivers (Sean Penn) has a heart condition, Jack Jordan (Benicio del Toro) is an ex-con, and Cristina Peck (Naomi Watts) is Jack’s wife. A car crash and heart transplant changed their lives forever, forcing them to reexamine how to move on from tragedy and the power of bonding.

The acclaimed director Alejandro González Iñárritu frames this film entirely out of order to create a more complete understanding of the different perspectives. The pinballing of various characters at various points allows the picture to explore everything from addition to pregnancy. It’s a very somber film, but the way it’s presented non-linearly makes it feel more uniquely human than just a series of events that could border on melodrama.

21 Grams

Release Date

November 18, 2003

Runtime

124 minutes

Director

Alejandro González Iñárritu

8

Run Lola Run

One of the fastest-paced and exciting non-linear films is undoubtedly Tom Tykwer’s Run Lola Run. Lola (Franka Potente) finds herself struggling to save her boyfriend Manni (Moritz Bleibtreu) in a short amount of time. In need of 100,000 Deutsche Mark in twenty minutes, her desperation sends her running through the streets and creating a butterfly effect with her actions.

The film is one of the more unorthodox non-linear stories, given that it isn’t so much about telling events out of order as exploring different possibilities. Lola’s quest often restarts after arriving at a bad end, highlighting how even the slightest change in actions can affect everything. The zippy style was so exhilarating that it inspired an episode of The Simpsons, with Lisa taking on the running role.

Run Lola Run

Release Date

March 3, 1998

Runtime

81 Minutes

Director

Tom Tykwer

7

Barbarian

Something doesn’t feel right when Tess (Georgina Campbell) arrives at an Airbnb house already occupied by another renter, Keith (Bill Skarsgård). Everything seems okay with Keith, but something horrific lurks under this Detroit home’s surface. She eventually discovers the sinister secret, but in a disturbing series of twists, she finds herself fleeing through dark corridors.

Zach Cregger (The Whitest Kids U’Know) wrote and directed Barbarian, a highly subversive horror that toyed with convention. The film shifts between different characters and times (ranging from a few hours to a few decades ago) to present a complete picture of how a horrific life can fester and be unleashed when the door is left open. For being directed by a comedic actor, the film also finds just the right off-beat notes to give some giggles amid all the frights and gore.

Barbarian

Release Date

September 9, 2022

Runtime

102 minutes

Director

Zach Cregger

6

Memento

Leonard Shelby (Guy Pearce) has short-term memory loss and needs to rely on various notes and images to retain his memories. He’ll need to rely on these clues if he wants to figure out who murdered his wife. But he might not be ready to learn everything, as there are some regretful memories he’d rather forget.

Christopher Nolan directed Memento, which presented both linear and non-linear events through color and black-and-white, a technique he would later employ for Oppenheimer. The black-and-white scenes are in chronological order, while the color scenes are posed in reverse order, a play with timelines that could inspire Nolan’s Tenet. It’s a tense and intriguing psychological thriller that has even been highlighted for presenting a fairly accurate portrayal of anterograde amnesia, according to some neuroscientists like Christof Koch.

Memento

Release Date

May 25, 2001

Runtime

113 minutes

Director

Christopher Nolan

5

Kill Bill Vol. 1

The Bride is out for revenge in Kill Bill Vol. 1. Having been left for dead at the altar, Uma Thurman plays a woman seeking to slaughter the assassins responsible for ruining her wedding. Her bloody quest for satisfaction will take her to a Japanese club where she lays waste to waves of killer yakuza in this gruesome and stylish saga of action.

Quentin Tarantino wrote and directed this giddy fusion of samurai films, crime thrillers, neo-westerns, and anime. Like his other films, Tarantino divides the movie into chapters that all feel like distinct tonal shifts, with one chapter being a blood bath of sword-swinging action and another being an anime-style origin story of a rival. With a soundtrack borrowing from classics like Lady Snowblood, Kill Bill may be one of the best action movies framed in a non-linear format.

Kill Bill: Vol. 1

Release Date

October 10, 2003

Runtime

111 minutes

Director

Quentin Tarantino

4

Mulholland Drive

Rita (Laura Elena Harring) is a lost woman on the streets of Los Angeles who befriends the newcomer, Betty (Naomi Watts). With few memories after surviving a car crash, Rita needs to figure out her true identity amid the dream-like quality of the City of Angels. But her quest will be a dark and cerebral one, where she ventures into the city’s darkest corners and her mind, revealing the hideous nature of fame that some would prefer to bury.

David Lynch directed Mulholland Drive in a way that exposed the sinister underbelly of the city as much as he did for small-town life in Twin Peaks. As with that show, the film shifts between different characters and realities as Rita recalls the past through recovered thoughts and dark dreams. It’s a surreal masterpiece that shifts between mesmerizing dreams and chilling nightmares, presenting the most intoxicating neo-noir mysteries.

Mulholland Drive

Release Date

October 19, 2001

Runtime

147 minutes

Director

David Lynch

3

Rashomon

Based on Ryūnosuke Akutagawa’s short story, Rashomon takes place in old Kyoto, where a murder and sexual assault have taken place. Four different individuals who reveal very different perspectives on the same series of events are voicing testimony for this crime. The nature of honesty, justice, and egotism is explored in this complex tale of how our perception of the world is greatly affected by our own ideals.

Rashomon is one of the most influential non-linear films because it observes the troubling trial aspect of recalling events. Not only did this film help launch Akira Kurosawa’s international reputation as a filmmaker, but it also inspired many movies and TV shows that duplicated the same format. The film is fascinating for its contemplation on unreliability and also ended up becoming a clever joke on The Simpsons, where Marge says that Homer enjoyed Rashomon, only for Homer to remark, “That’s not how I remember it.”

Rashomon

Release Date

August 25, 1950

Runtime

88 Minutes

Director

Akira Kurosawa

2

Pulp Fiction

Director Quentin Tarantino left a lasting cinematic mark on the 1990s with Pulp Fiction. The film follows a series of characters involved in crime, ranging from a talkative hitmen duo (John Travolta, Samuel L. Jackson) to a down-on-his-luck boxer (Bruce Willis). In between all the chaos of tracking down a suitcase and taking out targets, there are plenty of conversations on everything from burgers in France to old TV shows.

Pulp Fiction is revered as one of Tarantino’s strongest films for playing around with an ensemble cast amid shifting times, divided into chapters. Even when you know which characters will not survive, the crisp and believable dialogue makes every scene remarkable and worth following to the final frame. With its highlighting of pop culture and intense situations of death being one gunshot away, it’s safe to say Pulp Fiction redefined non-linear filmmaking and inspired an entire generation of filmmakers to try their hand at such a process.

Pulp Fiction

Release Date

October 14, 1994

Runtime

154 minutes

Director

Quentin Tarantino

1

Challengers

Time gets batted around like a tennis ball in the erotic and exhilarating drama of Luca Guadagnino’s Challengers. The film depicts a love triangle between the tennis-loving Tashi (Zendaya) and the two tennis players feuding for her heart, the competitive Patrick (Josh O’Connor) and Art (Mike Faist). The problem is that while the boys want sex, all Tashi wants is a good tennis match, willing to manipulate these two men and their friendship for the sake of a sports spectacle.

Using a major tennis match as the staging for this love triangle, the film darts back and forth between the threesome’s early days of first meeting and the rocky relationship routes they’ve taken since. Guadagnino’s direction makes every match, meeting, and makeout session carry such a punch, even when you start seeing where these careers and relationships are headed. It’s also just an expertly shot film with one of the most unforgettable tennis sequences ever placed on film.

Challengers

Release Date

April 26, 2024

Runtime

131 Minutes

Director

Luca Guadagnino

Non-linear films feel more real, given that they are not shot or edited linearly. They are often divided into a tidy story from a collection of moments framed over many days or weeks of production. Spreading out films in this manner can make for an entertaining way of perceiving events and contemplating the grander ambitions of the plot and characters. Whether they frame soldiers of war or hitmen on the streets, taking the non-linear route made these movies come alive.