"The Chronology of Water" Is an Extraordinary Directorial Debut

""I remember things in retinal flashes," Yuknavitch explains in the book. "Without order." In another passage, she says, "All the events of my life swim in and out between each other," adding that, although her memory is nonlinear, "we can put it into lines to narrativize over fear." The liberation of time is central to modern cinema, because, once a movie is acknowledged as a work of first-person art as much as a book is, subjectivity itself becomes its overarching subject."

"Stewart confronts the literary source head on, making the authorial voice, in voice-over, a full and crucial part of the movie. Moreover, because of Yuknavitch's distinctive approach to her story, breaking through familiar modes of storytelling in movies then becomes an essential challenge, and Stewart, reconceiving Yuknavitch's art of memory as her own, takes up that challenge with skill, imagination, and audacious freedom."

Kristen Stewart's first feature maps nonlinear memory into cinematic language. The film centers on a stillbirth placed chronologically amid rapid, retinal-flash intercuts that traverse childhood, adolescence, motherhood, and the emergence of creative talent. First-person narration appears as voice-over and functions as a guiding subjective presence. Editing favors quick cuts and disjunctive juxtapositions to mimic memory's movements. Time is liberated to foreground subjectivity, and formal risks replace familiar storytelling modes. Stewart keeps certain structural anchors while embracing audacious freedom, using skill and imagination to translate fragmented recollection into a bold, emotionally powerful cinematic experience.

Read at The New Yorker