Notable Movie Structures and Frameworks

[ono]

One of my self-criticisms of my own writing is I always seem to have to have a certain framework for telling a story.  I don't know if it's a bad thing.  It's just the way I've structured things.  I remember a story I wrote in creative writing class in college, one criticism I received from the professor was, "why do you have this story told via the point of view of two people coming together, one telling the story to another?"  Indeed, that framework wasn't entirely necessary and it would have worked without that extra layer.  So when is it necessary?

So I was thinking about other frameworks and structures for which stories are told, and which are not?  Full Metal Jacket is in two parts.  Boogie Nights is separated by decades and title cards.  Magnolia uses shifts in the weather.  My questions are twofold well, threefold:

What are some other effective frameworks and structures used to tell stories?

I was trying to search for films in which the film is distinctly split up into chapters, specifically of "special numbers" (like 10 or 12, or it could be any other number for any reason).  IIRC, Kill Bill did this.  I'm sure some black and white French New Wave film or another did this effectively but it's been so long since I've cared about the French New Wave I really couldn't tell you.  Any good examples of films separated into chapters with specific title cards (possibly definitive white text on black, but it doesn't have to be that way)?

Any other insights, or opinions to the importance of how well structured or framed a film is?

[polkablues]

I remember "Babe" being structured in chapters of a sort, with the little interstitials of the talking mice signifying each chapter break.

[jerome]

I've always liked the way The Royal Tenenbaums is presented as a book, and you get a glimpse of a page & the first few descriptive sentences with each new chapter.

[Mel]

"Dogville" - film told in 9 chapters and prologue.

[samsong]

vivre sa vie.  breaking the waves.  hannah and her sisters.

some more radical uses of structure i've seen in film is in asian cinema, namely in the films of hong sang soo and apichatpong weerasethakul.  check out the power of the kangwon province and tropical malady.

[Lottery]

Syndromes and Century's 2 part structure worked fantastically for the film.

Regarding chapters and stuff, Isao Takahata's My Neighbors the Yamadas is delivered in the form of vignettes. Like little comic strips. Some sections are longer though most of them are in this short film sort of format.

A really good one from Ghibli actually.

[jenkins]

as with every possible component of cinema, enter the void

gaspar noé:

Few of the arts can satisfy man's need to be uplifted as immediately as film. And none (except interactive video games) can yet reproduce the maelstrom of our states of perception and consciousness. In the past, certain films have tried to adopt the subjective point of view of the main character. enter the void will try to improve upon its predecessors and accompany the hero just as much in his normal state of awareness as in his altered states: the state of alertness, the stream of consciousness, memories, dreams...

The visions described in the script are inspired partly by the accounts of people who have had near-death experiences, who describe a tunnel of light, seeing their lives flashing past them and 'astral' visions, and partly by similar hallucinatory experiences obtained by consuming DMT, the molecule which the brain sometimes secretes at the moment of death and which, in small doses, enables us to dream at night. The film should sometimes scare the audience, make it cry and, as much as possible, hypnotise it.

In recent years, films with labyrinthine structures have proved the audience's ability to follow storylines in the form of a puzzle, and its desire to move away from linear narration.

But a complex form where the content does not move the spectator in any way would only amount to mathematic virtuosity. Whereas this film is above all a melodrama: the universal melodrama of a young man who, after the brutal death of his parents, promises that he will protect his little sister no matter what and who, sensing that he himself is dying, fights desperately to keep his promise. A film where the life of one person is linked to the love he has for another human being.

inspired scorsese (47mins):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z9ZFVLfVXqQ&hd=1&t=47m

[MacGuffin]

Rules of Attraction is structured by seasonal party themes.

[Sleepless]

I've been thinking about this a bit since you first posted it. Not really sure if this addresses your original query or not, but I think that simply having "chapters" to a movie doesn't necessarily do anything by itself, it's how they're used.

Donnie Darko uses chapters in the sense of breaking the film up into different dates. Since the "ticking clock" has already been established "in X days the world will end," with each new chapter we know we're one step closer to whatever the big climax will be.

In both Meet Me In St. Louis and Another Year, there are four chapters - each based on a different season of the year. But even though each film takes place over the course of an entire year, I believe that in each case each chapter focuses just on a single day (or at least 24 hour period). In MMISL's case, it's to show the highlights of a story that takes place over this long. AY does a similar thing, but places greater emphasis on learning who these characters are by exploring them in these vignettes.

Obviously Tarantino uses chapters a lot in Kill Bill and Inglorious Basterds. Not sure what to really say about his use of them.

What about films like Traffic or 21 Grams? I'd argue both those films employ the chapters approach by picking and choosing the moments of the stories we get to see, even though they're not explicitly tagged as chapters for the audience's benefit.