Word: flashbacking
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...film also suffers from clunky dialogue and clumsy structuring: nearly the entire first half is occupied by the cheap and easy device of an extended flashback of Vincent's childhood, complete with voice-over by Hawke. A clever O. Henry plot twist near the end is spoiled by the stupidly predictable confrontation that follows; the love story feels grafted onto this loveless world for Hollywood purposes; and the ending, perhaps inevitably, is a let-down, its tone of solemn optimism recalling the blandly humanistic "this is only the first step" resolution of Contact...
...psychological devastation as it does with romance and criminal intrigue, it is to be expected that the protagonist should, in proper Freudian fashion, relive certain events of his life over and over again, seeking control over events otherwise relegated to the unchangeable past. Fassbinder brutally exploits the technique of flashback in scenes in which Biberkopf recalls the murder of his girlfriend. Fassbinder offers different voice-overs in each reenactment, which appears in each of the 13 segments. It gets very tedious watching the same clip no less than 14 times, and the often-worthwhile meanings contained within the voice-overs...
...FLASHBACK...
...story is told through a series of flashback, in which the various couples lead Robert down a path of self-awareness that concludes in the birthday party. The couples' individual situations show Robert that married life indeed requires that which he fears--sacrifice and pain--but it also provides a sense of fulfillment and completeness...
...plan: a good man, Virgil Caudill, caught in a crushing predicament not of his making, commits a murder that seems unavoidable, abandons his home in the Kentucky hill country and survives precariously in Montana. The pages that narrate this contain no misdirection, no writerish word tasting, not even a flashback or shift in point of view, just fierce attention to the moment at hand. It is hard to see how Offutt's chapters could be more effective in the skill of their telling...