The 10 Best Movies That Tell The Same Story From Multiple Perspectives

The earliest example of a movie narrative with multiple perspectives is the still revolutionary 1950 movie Rashomon. However, it still didn’t become a regular technique in Hollywood until Quentin Tarantino popularized the story-telling method in the ’90s.

The filmmaker opened up the floodgates for every budding screenwriter to have a go at writing their own screenplays with multiple perspectives. These kinds of movies aren’t easy to write, but that means that when they are pulled off, they’re wholly satisfying. Between an assassination attempt on the US president and a husband being the prime suspect in his wife’s missing person case, some films shine with multiple perspectives.

10 Vantage Point (2008)

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The clue is in the name, as a specific sequence is played repeatedly, but from the perspective of different characters at several different vantage points. Vantage Point isn’t as well known as the other movies, but it’s a great example of a narrative told from many different perspectives, even if it received mixed reviews.

The movie follows an assassination attempt on the President of the United States, and it uses the film technique to attempt to uncover the truth. However, it doesn’t have the most favorable reviews, and that comes down to the way the technique is used. Where films use the multiple-perspective device to question the possibility of truth, Vantage Point uses it to simply hide a twist, with each consecutive “vantage point” revealing just a little bit more of what happened.

9 Snake Eyes (1998)

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Snake Eyes is one of the most exciting Nicolas Cage-driven movies of the 1990s, and that’s saying a lot. It was generally criticized when it was released, but even critics were taken aback by its impressive mystery storytelling.

The movie has a classic Rashomon approach, as it sees witnesses of a daylight assassination giving vividly different accounts of what they saw. It’s down to detective Rick Santoro to figure out exactly what’s going on, and though the movie’s climax is a little unsatisfying, the journey is a typically Cage-like wild ride.

8 Pulp Fiction (1994)

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Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction interweaves different perspectives in the narrative like improvised jazz music. Just like the instruments, characters weave in and out of the story as they please, sometimes whole scenes recur out of nowhere, and when it lands and it all comes together like one big crescendo, it’s one of the most euphoric moments in cinema possible.

There are so many examples of multiple perspectives in the one movie, and it’s perfectly bookended with the same scene from two different viewpoints. The diner scene shows Pumpkin and Honey bunny holding up the diner from their perspective, and at the end of the movie, the same scene sees Jules being affected by it from his perspective.

7 Rashomon (1950)

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Rashomon is the very first example of a movie telling a story from several different perspectives, and it still remains one of the most influential of them all. The movie sees several different people recounting the way in which a samurai was murdered in the forest, and all of the descriptions are vastly different.

At the end of the story, it’s all wrapped up in one of the cleverest and most satisfying ways. It’s unsurprising that Rashomon is referenced in Reservoir Dogs, as Quentin Tarantino has made so many movies that depict the same events from the perspective of different characters.

6 Gone Girl (2014)

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2014’s Gone Girl is director David Fincher at his most Fincheresque, as all of his trademarks are turned up to 11. The auteur is best known for beautiful-looking thrillers that can be absolutely brutal at the same time, and they’re all shrouded in mystery.

The film accomplishes all of those things, and it achieves its mystery by having each half of the film being from the perspective of different people. As the movie is about a wife who has gone missing and her husband is a prime suspect, the first half is from the husband’s perspective, and the second half is from the wife’s. The result is one of the best mystery movies on Hulu.

5 Go (1999)

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It’s clear that Go is influenced by Pulp Fiction, and it’s one of many films to do so, as it’s yet another low-budget, scrappy ’90s flick about several different characters with interlocking narratives. But unlike many of the films of its kind, Go is actually pretty great.

However, it isn’t just a multistranded narrative that it borrows from Pulp Fiction, as all the characters end up seeing the same events from different perspectives too. The movie follows a handful of unique characters who are all tied to an ecstasy deal in strange ways and depending on the perspective, it’ll make viewers look at the characters through completely different lenses.

4 Knives Out (2019)

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As Knives Out is still so fresh in people’s minds, especially with two sequels on the way, the movie is one of the most obvious examples of the narrative technique. It pulls off the multiple perspectives in such a unique way.

Each character recounts the same events when they’re been interviewed by Benoit Blanc, but they each have their own secrets they’re trying to hide. Not only that, but all the characters have their own flavor of storytelling too. It makes for a massively entertaining web that the audience is trying to untangle before the answer is fed to them.

3 Amores Perros (2000)

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Amores Perros is not for the faint of heart, as the whole crux of the movie is dogfighting, and it’s part of what links three separate narratives together. It’s a filmmaker’s film, as it’s one of Denis Villeneuve’s favorite movies, and it is a landmark in multiple perspective storytelling.

The other major link between the three narratives is a car accident, and viewers will have a different feeling about the accident from each of the three different perspectives. The movie blends so many themes including inequality, violence, and disloyalty, and it makes for one of the grittiest but most eye-opening movies of the 2000s.

2 21 Grams (2003)

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Just like Amores Perros, 21 Grams was directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu, and the two movies bear a lot of similarities. Not only do they both tell the same story several times over from the perspectives of different characters, but it’s again based around a car accident.

However, it’s far from a simple rehash, and the way the narrative interweaves is even more complex, with each of the characters having a past, present, and future. Not only that, but the themes are just as heavy and emotionally exhausting too.

1 Jackie Brown (1997)

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It feels obvious that Jackie Brown doesn’t get talked about enough when it comes to Quentin Tarantino’s filmography, and the underrated movie pulls off the multiple-perspective technique just as well as Pulp Fiction.

In the 1997 film, there’s an intense and frustrating scene where Jackie exchanges money with Louis in a shopping mall, and it results in Melanie getting shot dead in the parking lot. The scene plays out three times throughout the movie from three different perspectives. It doesn’t make audiences feel different depending on which perspective they’re watching, but it makes them realize that some characters know more than they’re letting on.