A Study of Narrative Time in About Eli and The Past based on Gerard Genette's Theory

Since narrative plays a significant role in cinema, its detailed structural study is a promising area of investigation. In this line of inquiry, two Iranian movies, namely, About Eli and The Past by Asghar Farhadi were selected to be analyzed based on a structural approach. Gerard Genette's theory of chronological relations between story and narrative was applied to these movies; the concepts of "order", "duration" and "frequency" were detected in both narratives in order to explain the complexities of the movies. According to Genette, "order" is the relation between the time of the story and that of the text or discourse. This comparative study revealed that due to its allegiance to the realist cinema, About Eli potentially has a linear "order", being in correspondence with the events of the story. In addition, there are a few anachronisms in the text. However, in The Past, as the title implies, flashback has a crucial role, but all the flashbacks are speech-based not visual which is in line with the world of the realist cinema. The scene type of "duration" were employed in both movies whenever there was a need to introduce some characters or to attract the attentions to some particularities. Moreover, the ellipsis type of "duration" were used in order to create the suspension and dilemma of the plot. "Frequency" is mostly singulative in both works in order to keep the movies loyal to the realist cinema.