Structuralist Perspectives on the Wholeness and Synchronie of Non-Linear Film Narratives --The Film Babel as an Example

Abstract

Structuralism is a methodology that originated in the nineteenth century, which asserts that all human activities are constructed rather than natural or essential and, therefore, emphasises the study of structure and regularities in terms of larger systems. In this perspective, cinema uniquely affects the viewers emotions or perception of what is on screen through the use of a variety of codes, symbols or conventions that resemble the structure of language. At the same time, non-linear narratives are an important and special category of cinematic, the so-called non-linear narrative being a film in which two or more perspectives and scenes are narrated in alternating and disrupted chronological order. This article uses textual analysis to dismantle and sort out the theme, spatial and temporal construction, audio-visual elements, and more in Babel, a typical non-linear narrative film, to prove that the two basic features of structuralism theory - wholeness and synchronise - are the most important and special category of non-linear narrative films. It argues that even though the non-linear narrative film has the fractured nature of spatial and temporal construction, the core still serves the film as a whole. The non-linear narrative of film breaks the traditional narrative mode of smooth narrative in the past, and is now an important exploration and innovation in the history of cinema from the perspective of structuralism.