The Butterfly Effect

Hi Guys,

Sometimes we say or hear others saying ‘A small mistake you commit can create blunders later’. This can be a simple definition for Butterfly Effect. Something that has been done is some part of time leads to incidents in some other part of time. The way the theory has developed in fantastic.

Butterfly Effect is the initial condition of Chaos Theory, which itself implies the same meaning. It evolved in the 1960s, when Edward Lorenz of MIT, Cambridge observed that weather prediction can go wrong if a very small value is neglected. Scientists neglected the numbers after 3 decimal places. The prediction went wrong, but it was right when they observed number of 6 decimal places.

Lorenz said, ‘It has been said that something as small as the flutter of a butterfly’s wing can ultimately cause a typhoon half the way around the world’. In my perception, Butterfly effect applies to all notes of our life. Everything we do, right from the time we wake up to the time we sleep impact the next day’s work or even our future.

Confused why I’m writing all these things? There has been lot of movies based on the Butterfly Effect or Chaos Theory. Even the Tamil movie Dhasavatharam was based on this theory. Hope you remember Kamal saying about Chaos Theory with the help of a butterfly at the beginning of the movie.

Last week I watched a wonderful movie named ‘The Butterfly effect’. I was largely impressed by the movie. It’s an American Psychological Thriller movie released in 2004.

Movie Review

Evan Treborn lives with his mother in a small town. At his young age (7 and 13), few sad incidents occur. It is believed that he caused the incidents, but Evan doesn’t remember anything that happens at that particular moment. He gets blackened for a few minutes and within that time, the terrible incidents occur. His mother and friends don’t believe him and says he is trying to escape. His mother takes him to a psychiatrist. The doctor tells the boy to take notes of the incidents happening to him.

At 20, when Evan is in college he gets to read the notes which he had written as per doctor’s instruction. He is taken back to the past. He remembers the incidents and he is able to redo things. When he changes the original incidents, he finds himself in the present at a new place. But the incidents he redo, lead to some other unexpected problems. Finally he goes back to the very beginning and makes his friends forget him. He deletes his notes so that he is not tempted to redo things again.

All along the way, Evan appears in different roles like a prisoner, amputee, etc. The incidents changes very quickly in the later part of the movie. At one moment Evan will be in college and in another 5 minutes he will be in some other place and so on. I was confused the first time I watched the movie. But I understood it when I read reviews and critics in websites. Overall it was a wonderful movie.

External Links

Butterfly Effect-Wikipedia

Chaos and Fracrtiles

The Butterfly Effect Movie- Wikipedia

Happy Reading!!!