In the Poetics, Aristotle favors the unity of a single driving plot and a central conflict as it concentrates energies and offers the greatest possibility for catharsis. Episodic narratives are considered inferior, because energies disperse through multiple self-contained plots. 

While seeming to take extreme efforts at filtering subjectivity, the authors of the documentary are also withholding crucial information: what was the "violent unknown event" and why the use of an acronym "V.U.E."? The entry point, the first few minutes of the film, sets up a narrative mystery and raises questions about the authenticity of the narration. The V.U.E acts as a traditional McGuffin, a plot element that will do much to sustain (and strain) narrative interest and focused attention throughout the 182 minute film. To uncover the mystery of V.U.E, the viewer must pay attention to an abundance of visual and verbal evidence from a very long, digressive and contingent documentary about the victims, and imaginatively fill in missing data. Despite the attempts to categorize and order events into controlled narrative systems, a human trait the film mocks, the documentary erupts in a comic excess of linguistic and cinematic styles — a kind of semantic chaos similar to the violence of the event itself.