The Power of Narrative

Rating: 9/10 (30 March 2005)

Amazingly, from the people who brought the world Final Destination 2 and the obscure Blunt comes The Butterfly Effect, a Donnie Darko-esque tale of time travel and rearranged reality, ending with a characteristic sense of loss. Common to the two films as well is the theme of child abuse, a dark undercurrent playing a more central role in Butterfly certainly, but which in both cases serves to anchor fantastic goings on elsewhere in a more brutal reality. Along with the more systematic arrangement of linear time by Memento, such films show a concern with the mechanics of storytelling rare in modern American cinema, and which reintroduce some avant garde techniques back into the mainstream.
Darko has his malevolent rabbit as the principal instigator of events, Kutcher has his journals. Both provide a way into different perspectives as time frames and points of view shift, at length providing the audience with an ambiguity that's intoxicating as much as it is exciting. But whereas Darko was more concerned with the personalised mechanics of a form of 'time travel', and impending disaster, what lies at the centre of Butterfly is slightly different. Bress and Gruber's film carries its heart a metaphor for the power of written and viewed narrative itself, in which ultimately the importance of the reading the 'text' is as significant as it was in the aforementioned Memento.
Kutcher's journals (or the old home movies he views) is the text here, which dictates the movement of the plot, readily changing perceptions and expectations. By accessing these documents, by revisiting stored events, the hero can alter and hopefully enrich his experiences - a vain hope, as it emerges. 'Just think of your mind as a movie, you can pause, rewind or slow down any details you want' he is told at one point. Projected on the screen of his unconscious, such reclaimed memories can overcome blackouts and even effect history. By focusing on such an implication, narrative in general - and cinema's primacy in particular - is affirmed.