Written and published by Nihilitus
Date of publication: June 25, 2024.
The 2004 production by Eric Bress J. and Mackye Gruber once again brought science to the cinematic plane. Time travel, in fact, had already been addressed in other productions such as “Terminator” or “Back to the future”, but Butterfly Effect interprets the phenomenon from the super-conscious plane of a character who has the power to go back in time to change the catastrophic events he experiences with his friends.
Movie:
The Butterfly Effect
Director:
Eric Bress J. and Mackye Gruber
Studio/Year of release:
Film Engine, Benderspink & Katalyst/2004
The story plays with different temporalities of the characters, although all are intertwined with the mysterious episodes of amnesia suffered by the protagonist of the film, Evan (Ashton Kutcher), which are apparently related to a superior neurological disease suffered by his father (Callum Keith Rennie), who is confined in a sanatorium.
The following video has been published for educational purposes. Copyrights by New Line Cinema, 2004
Evan’s mental lapses are treated by medical specialists and they find no explanation for them, so they suggest that he keep a written record of his daily life. Evan will find these journals useful, especially when he arrives at college and discovers that the lives of his childhood friends are in a mess. Affected by different types of trauma, Evan is sure he knows their origin, but his amnesia prevents him from remembering.
When he discovers that the life of his childhood sweetheart Keyleigh (Amy Smart) is going through difficult times, Evan tries to intervene, but receives the refusal of her friend who also claims why he never showed up in the difficult moments of her life. Days later Evan receives a call informing him of Keyleigh’s death by suicide.
The following video has been published for educational purposes. Copyrights by New Line Cinema, 2004
Shocked by the news, Evan decides to seek an explanation for the death of her friend using the power he has to travel through time, but for that he will need to return to his childhood diaries. When he does so, he not only remembers what he had forgotten due to amnesia, but also relives those moments, transgressing the limits of time-space.
Evan will not only merely bear witness to what he had forgotten, but will intervene to alter the future and prevent the tragic death of her friend. However, each time he intervenes, his life condition and that of his friends changes drastically without altering the end result of it all: the inevitable death of his lost love.
The following video has been published for educational purposes. Copyrights by New Line Cinema, 2004
Although the film has a notable influence of mathematician Edward Lorenz’s theory of the butterfly effect, the events and ending are more in line with another controversial theory that is insistently discussed in the field of quantum physics: the multiverse theory.
“In the interpretation of parallel worlds, when you make a choice, the other choices happen as well,” says David Deutsch, a quantum physicist at Oxford University consulted by New Scientist magazine (2014). “If there is a small chance of an adverse consequence, say someone is killed, we have to take into account the fact that someone is actually going to die, even if it’s in another universe.”
According to this quantum interpretation, Evan’s character may not be making a journey into the past to alter the future, he may be taking the position of his other selves in parallel universes that will inevitably result in alternative outcomes to the one he wants to change such as the death of his childhood sweetheart, or the death of his mother from lung cancer. These, in fact, are inescapable and unalterable events because within the structure of a multiverse they have to occur, otherwise their nature would not make sense no matter how contradictory they are to the principle of life.
Here we transcend the scientific interpretation and place ourselves more in the field of metaphysics, to say the least, but even scientists themselves have an idea of what could transcend this structure. For Don Page, a theoretical physicist at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada, accepting the multiverse from the world of subatomic particles implies thinking about how limited human actions can be, and how questionable a concept as exalted in the modern world as free will can be. But in addition, the multiverse would help us understand why God tolerates the existence of evil.
“God has values,” he says. “He loves us at will, because he feels that we live in a reality in which he determines everything, so it is impossible for humans to act independently,” he argues. “God is not going to alter the world you live in to cure people of cancer, or prevent earthquakes or whatever, because that would make the universe much less elegant.” For Page, that’s an intellectually satisfying solution to the problem of evil.
If we take a deep look at Eric Bress J. and Mackye Gruber’s production we will realize that these dilemmas are deeply embedded in the story of Evan and his friends. It is notorious, for example, Evan’s uselessness in trying to change the future because he wants to save his past love, but they can’t because the future ends up being inevitably tragic for the two of them, in any scenario. The version from which we have compiled an excerpt of the film has an alternate ending where Evan realizes the impossibility of sharing his life in harmony with Keyleigh, and decides to end his life before he is born. Only then, he realizes, will the life of his lost love and that of his friends follow an orderly trajectory away from tragedy. A rather sad ending, but impeccable, in the sense of making us understand that free will is only an illusion.
Nihilitus 