One of my favorite non-linear narratives is the 1994 Macedonian film _Before the Rain_, by Milcho Manchevski. Unlike _Pulp Fiction_, to which it is often compared, it cannot be rearranged afterward in the viewer's mind to form a linear narrative. The chronology defies reality. The declaration "Time never dies; the circle is not round," recurs several times in slightly altered form. Although the film appears to come full circle and return to the beginning at the end, the final sequence is not identical to the first. I don't have the reference handy, but Manchevski has said that the seeming "time paradoxes" in his film, when characters are at places and at times they can't logically be, are meant to suggest not that we are trapped by time, but that sometimes there may be an opening for escape. History is not cyclical, but rather a spiral, where we come back to nearly--but not quite--the same point, over and over. Inherent in this is the possibility of breaking out of the spiral--in this case the death spiral of ethnic hatred and violence. So, in this case the narrative structure is not a clever gimmick, but contains within itself the "moral of the story." The film compares ethnic and religious hostility in Northern Ireland to that between ethnic Albanians and Macedonians in Macedonia. In light of recent events in those two places, as well as in Israel and the U.S., the film seems more timely than ever. Peace and solidarity, Lynn ---- Online resources for film/TV studies may be found at ScreenSite http://www.tcf.ua.edu/ScreenSite