The American film The butterfly effect
The butterfly effect is an American film, released on January 23, 2004. It was directed by Eric Bress and J. Mackye Gruber, who have also written the second and quarter of the successful final destination saga, demonstrating their interests in science fiction, psychological and suspense. In the same year the film won the Pegasus public award at the Brussels Fantastic International Festival.
To understand the film, it is appropriate to understand its title, the butterfly effect is a concept of chaos theory, proposed by Edward Lorenz mathematician and meteorologist in the 60s, basically proposes that small variations in the initial conditions of an event cancause great differences in the behavior of the future.
This interrelation of cause and consequence occurs in all events of life and above all in the economic market. The film was filmed in a period in which the economy of the first world power, according to data published by the American newspaper The Washington Post, was in the recovery of a considerable economic crisis. On the contrary, the competition of the Chinese country lived a precipitated growth. With this, the concept of the theory of a butterfly in Hong Kong can unleash a storm in New York "is hypothetically evidence.
Its protagonist was the humorist Ashton Kutcher, who had previously deepened about psychology and the cases of dissociation disorders, which come to block memories. Thus the actor took a dark role with the character of Evan, a child who suffers a disorder that produces mental lagoons in traumatic moments and that during his childhood is a victim of abuse and mishaps by adults and his best friends, Kayleight (Amy Smart), Tommy (William Lee Scott) and Lenny (Elden Henson).
It is interesting how the film goes from being a pretext of drama to a time travel story. When Evan, at a more advanced age he discovers that through his life newspapers, which he had written throughout his childhood and adolescence, he can travel to the past and thus change the traumatic situations that he and his friends had experienced.
Once you look from a time travel perspective you can make a difficult movie to understand. In a basic context it is easy to understand that all the gains to the past that make evan alter the course of things and space. To follow this thread, the story focuses on the feelings that the protagonist has towards his best childhood friend, Kayleight and how he wants to protect it at the expense of modifying the future, having several alternative results.
During the story our main character will go from being a gifted student, to a popular member of a university fraternity, after a murderer and prisoner to a disabled person and finally to a patient admitted to a psychiatric hospital, all this result of the trips thatHe makes to those moments that in his childhood the mental lagoons had caused.
A great point in the film is its cast, specifically that of the children, since they managed to make the chronology of the characters realistic. For example, we have an EVAN of 7 years played by Logan Lerman, which reflects an innocent aspect, but with certain features of rebellion, the same with Tommy, by Cameron Bright, who plays a sadistic and violent child who ends inA reformatory.
Another point is chamber movements, the mixture of sounds and the special effects, these are subtle, but play a remarkable role. This stands out in the moments when Evan is transported over time, where a simple epileptic effect is shown, distorting the image to finally execute the reference to the flutter of a butterfly, managing to catch the viewer, put it completely on the trip andeven giving it a realistic touch.
A strong pillar of history is the projection that develops the issues of child abuse, pedophilia, violence, drugs, traumas and suicides. One of the scenes that shows us this is when Evan travels to his childhood, at the time when Kayleight’s pedophile father and Tommy, forces them to undress in front of the camera, here the protagonist faces him and tells him about how he isbetraying his daughter’s confidence, and that will lead her to narcotics, prostitution and finally suicide. In contrast, you must also discipline your child, because it is a small sadistic, who will kill, leave Lenny with psychological damage and will grow with resentment towards the rest of the world. These resolutions change to the point that they show that it is in the childhood stage in which the personality is molded and that these events can leave scars, marking for a lifetime.
However, in the film there are inconsistencies about time trips where the protagonist alters the future, but at other occasions nothing happens, which does not make much sense to the theory of the film. As when Evan wants to verify to his jail partner that he can perform these comings, so that, if he manages to make scars in both hands, he must help him to recover his newspapers that are in possession of the thugs of the place, for this reason readsThe only sheet that saved, the trip takes him to school, he quickly decides to bury two large metal blades in front of the entire class. Conveniently what happens, his brands appear, his friend helps him and everything goes according to the plan, however, the logical thing is that to that deconelonged decision has caused a huge consequence over time.
At the end of the tape the protagonist in the midst of despair to fix everything, he decides to travel to the past for the last time when he met Kayleight, a simple, but powerful phraseYou remain ”causes them to never coincide, avoiding all traumatic scenes. This is where the film looks, with the songWithout looking back and following their way.
But it turns out that there are three other alternative finals. The first Evan determines to follow her leaving an open end for the audience, in the second he speaks and invites her to a coffee and the last outcome is completely different and disturbing because the protagonist travels to become a fetus inside her mother, when sheHe is about to give birth, he decides to hang himself with the umbilical cord in order to have ever existed.
In summary, I recommend seeing the butterfly effect because it is inevitable that the history of the main character does not reproduce a feeling of empathy and compassion when accompanying it in each of his decisions in order to fix his traumatic episodes, especially those of his friends. The frustration and anxiety that generates one as a hearing of wanting to see him make a good decision for whose life will work and that will not finally be achieved is considerable. When the protagonist realizes that he is the problem, he showed courage, he chose to live without the person he loved, recognizing his past and learning to remain with pain.
The film is very complex, however, at the same time very real, knowing how to recognize our background, learning from it, helps us to live in the present, this after all shows us how powerful the consequences of the acts themselves can be,since all at some point we wanted to change them, but unfortunately, as Evan’s father says "we cannot play to be God".
The butterfly effect is a film that summons us to rethink our decisions so that as spectators we focus on the plot from beginning to end. Two sequelae were also created, butterfly effect 2 (2006) and the butterfly effect: Revelation (2009), but they did not have the success or importance of their first delivery. Other travel films are Donnie Darko (2001) and the trilogy of returning to the future (1985 – 1990) that reproduce the same psychological thriller themes and crossings in time.
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