#MeToo, Stephen King, and Non-Linear Storytelling in New Films
It’s been almost a decade since the #MeToo movement promised to bring abusers in Hollywood to account.I’ve watched with interest as films have interrogated the moment in the years since. In 2020,there was *Promising Young Woman*,in which Carey Mulligan played a woman hellbent on punishing those who get away with abuse. And in 2023, *Women Talking* focused on a group of American Mennonite women who meet to discuss their future after discovering a history of rape in the colony.
*Sorry Baby*, which won awards at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, joins this decade of conversation. The film follows Agnes (played by the film’s writer-director Eva Victor), an English professor at a small american college, in the aftermath of a sexual assault.
The story, based on Victor’s own experiences, is structured in non-linear chapters that encompass the time after, before and during the abuse. This makes for an unflinching yet nuanced depiction of trauma’s aftermath. As our reviewer argues: “Victor portrays her female characters in a broad light, not allowing them to be solely defined by trauma, and in doing so allows something truly authentic to emerge.”
Sorry Baby is in select cinemas now
another film experimenting with non-linear storytelling this week is *The Life of Chuck*.It’s an adaptation of a novella by Stephen King. When I told our resident King expert, international affairs editor Jonathan Este, about the film, he was puzzled – surely, he asked, the structure of that story is unfilmable? But somehow, director Mike Flanagan makes it work.
Starring Tom Hiddleston, *The Life of Chuck* explores the formative moments of Charles “Chuck” Krantz, chronicled in reverse chronological order. But this is no *Benjamin Button* story. It’s a joyful adaptation that honours the king novella while bringing in nice touches of its own.
As Hiddleston – who gets to show off his dancing skills in the film – told the audience at a recent screening: “I think the most critically important word in the title of the film is the word ‘life’. This is a film about life.”
The Life of Chuck is in cinemas now
now open at the Bowhouse in Fife,Making Waves; Breaking Ground brings tog