FLASHBACK THEORY
Employing the agency of time itself as a contributing element to the storytelling in a script is inevitable, regardless of the form of flashback your script employs, or if it uses flashback at all. Linear-time stories and non-linear-time stories offer the reader (and the viewer) two completely different experiences.
When a story is told strictly in linear time (the beginning of the story occurring before the end of the story and the progression of the plot following the linear progression of time), the audience is taken through the story with the characters. As the characters experience the action, so, too, does the audience. Indeed, in linear-time stories, the audience may often engage in that all-too-common occurrence of “guessing the ending” of the film. If the characters and their progress matches time itself, then neither the characters nor the audience have an advantage in knowing the outcome of the story. It could be said that this method of story-telling embeds the suspense in theoutcome of the story rather than in thejourney of the characters.
However, when a story employs a non-linear time progression, the audience has a different view of the characters and the story itself. If the treatment of time is similar to Crash or Michael Clayton, where a flashback occurs early in Act One and then begins the story again, from a previous point of the character’s lives, and if the audience can assess that the storytelling in the film will be explanatory in nature–that the story itself will be the journey of returning the protagonist to the Starting Point that opened the film, and perhaps beyond that point, to a point of resolution–then the audience is positioned to focus on the journey rather than the outcome. Placing the audience in this position offers them a distinctly different experience. At once, they are voyeur as well as author. Once they understand that the story is a journey back to the Starting Point, they are participants in the journey, as well as viewers. They know where the story will return to; they know the protagonist will eventually overcome some demon or challenge and be back to the person he was in the opening scene. This time signature of storytelling is becoming more common, and so audiences may even expect the story to advance beyond the Starting Point to a point of resolution. In this form of storytelling, the audience is engaged in the story’s development because they know the character’s eventual destination.
The use of explanatory-flashback, however, can be less inviting to the audience. Since the single (or multiple) dip in the story’s time signature is used in place of exposition, it is often hardly noticed, as it neither changes time’s progression or the direction of the story, it merely reveals a past occurrence in a character’s life. As with exposition itself, explanatory-flashback leaves the audience with more information, and perhaps a deeper understanding of a character’s fears or motivations, but it does not necessarily compel the audience to be active in the story. This is not to say that this form of flashback is unnecessary or unwarranted. Indeed, the mid-story flashback in Casablanca is pivotal to understanding Rick’s character, and why he has such disdain for connecting with people. The loss of love revealed in the mid-script flashback explains why it is unlikely for him to help his ex-lover and her fiancé, but it doesn’t present any alternative options for him except to overcome the pain and loss of that broken affair.