What would you change??

Rating: 8/10 (18 January 2004)

So your life isn't perfect. You've had some pretty traumatic experiences you've managed to 'block out'. It's not that unusual; after all, you've experienced blackouts since childhood, most notably when these traumatic incidents occur. Must be your brain's way of coping, or something, because bad memories just aren't that great, right?
For Evan (Kutcher) a university Psych major, working on how the brain and memory are linked, and how memories can be recovered (specifically his own, perhaps?) maybe the occurrence of his blackouts mean slightly more than just a coping mechanism of his tortured grey matter. Having kept meticulous journals since he was a kid on the advice of his shrink, Evan starts re-reading long-forgotten passages from the stacks of composition books he's taken with him to assist with his research.
That's when the weird stuff starts.
We're treated to nifty optical effects - the words shifting and fluttering on the page like a butterfly's wings (Meant, I suppose, to refer back to that quote from the "chaos theory" we're treated to at the beginning of the film - you know - the one about the beating of a butterfly's wings could result in a typhoon on the other side of the world, or whatever...) Evan is all of a sudden transported back to a time and place from his past - and he realises that what he is seeing is an event from one of his blackouts, what he thinks to be a repressed memory. Is it simply a memory he now is able to recall, or has he somehow found a way to actually physically transport himself back to that time where he can change the outcome of that event?

We're never given any real reason why this phenomenon should occur - but that isn't what this movie is about. It is about a young man obsessed with creating for himself the perfect life, but in so doing either destroys the lives of those he cares about or has devastating consequences for his own. It makes us see that even the smallest event from our pasts and the choices we make then and there can have unforeseen and unpredictable results. Do we dare tamper with that if we had the ability?
Top marks go to Kutcher, because he gives an incredible performance that I didn't think he had it in him to give. The rest of the cast is simply superb, and the make-up artists need a big thumbs up for making us believe that the characters could appear mousy in one outcome, glamorous in another, horrifying and homely in yet another.