Date Watched
Saturday 14th January 2012
Format
Channel 4 SD (recorded)
With
Marie Faulkener
Date Watched
Saturday 14th January 2012
Format
Channel 4 SD (recorded)
With
Marie Faulkener
Just occasionally you have the pleasure to watch a film that you have long had in the back of your mind that you might enjoy but have never been quite interested enough in to actively chase it down – and when you DO finally watch it it turns out to be awesome in every way.
I had such an experience on Saturday night when down at Marie’s. We had watched Treasure Island (the Sky adaptation) which the children had sat through in one sitting, and the boys had gone to bed. The choice was The Butterfly Effect or Philadelphia - both of which Marie had recorded, and I had never watched.
The Butterfly Effect was chosen by Marie – and what an amazing, brilliant, absolute head-fuck of a movie it was! I absolutely adored it. Focusing on three key periods of a male’s life – when he was 7, 13, and 20 – and key events that shaped his life during those time periods. The thing in common that those events have is that they all involve periods of extreme stress, and during all the relevent periods the lead character appears to suffer some sort of blackout.
To say any more than this would ruin a film that really does need to be watched blind in order to get the full effect from it. I am not the kind of person who is easily duped by a film but this one kept me guessing as to what was going on right until the very end. Full kudos to the film for not having a ridiculous, happy, cop-out ending. It has the courage of it’s convictions and that is rare in this day and age.
I was amazed afterwards to look on the internet and find the film has a very low rating amongst critics and audiences – hovering around the 30% mark on all aggregate sites. Ignore them. OK, it doesn’t hold together if you think about it TOO much, but it is a film and a very clever one at that. I thoroughly enjoyed it!
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