Narrative Style Of Premonition

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Analyze the narrative style of: Premonition (2007) In this essay I will be exploring and analyzing the narrative form of Premonition (2007), which will contain the plot (the way a series of events are shown to the viewer) and story (how the series of event took place in reality), the cause and effect and how the latter is hidden or revealed, as well as the time and space of the film. The plot of Premonition does not happen in chronological order. As we are thrown between the past and future, what is real and what is a dream, we try to puzzle the pieces together of how JIM HANSON (Julian McMahan) the husband of LINDA (Sandra Bullock) has died on Wednesday. In the film we have a series of event happening in one week, where “It turns out that Linda is experiencing a fracture of time in the week leading up to Jim’s supposed death, during which she learns a lot about her marriage” (Pomeranz, 2007). The viewer figures out that the days start at 1, 2, 3 and so on, this means that the days don’t follow on one another but rather would be, day 1- Thursday, day 2- Monday etc. When Linda goes on with her ordinary life on Thursday (Day 1), she is utterly disturbed to find out that her husband has dies the previous day. However when she wakes up the next morning, she finds that Jim is still alive. She is confused as if to this, is a dream or reality and if yesterday could be her worst night mare. As this happens every time she wakes up and goes to bed, Jim is alive the one day, and is dead again the next, she starts keeping track of what happens, when. “Sunday: / Monday: JIM ALIVE AGAIN / Tuesday: CUTS, MEET DR. ROTH, JIM ALIVE / Wednesday: JIM DIES!!! / Thursday: FIND OUT JIM DIED / Friday: / Saturday: Funeral, LITHIUM??, COMMITTED BY ROT... ... middle of paper ... ...we understand what Clair was referring to. Day 5(Friday) would be correct according to the story, because the funeral only happens on Saturday; it would make sense that Clair would remember their conversation, and not Linda, as her days are not out of order. On Day 7 (Wednesday), we finally see the cause of Day 1’s effects, as Jim drives, trying to reach Linda on the house phone he leaves a message, but is interrupted by another incoming call. It is Linda’s cell phone and that is why Jim ends the voice mail with: “that you?” We can now make sense of the voice message. In this film the viewer only find out facts, as Linda the main character does, leaving us most of the time in the dark. We have restricted knowledge and an objective view on the story. We also gain some mental subjectivity as we go into Linda’s state of mind and what she firstly perceives as dreams.

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