The Butterfly Effect: Mr. Nobody

Case Study/Film: Mr. Nobody (2009) Genre: Drama, Fantasy, Sci-Fi

The Butterfly Effect: Where does it truly begin? What is the Butterfly Effect? "(with reference to chaos theory) the phenomenon whereby a minute localized change in a complex system can have large effects elsewhere."

This theory was explored in one of the many brilliant scenes in one of my favourites films: Mr. Nobody. Today I take a deeper dive into how Mr. Nobody introduces us to the Butterfly Effect and succeeds but fails. The Butterfly Effect even recorded in the scene I'll now speak on, is more or less deliberate cherry picking and I'm afraid humans (including myself) do this more often that we would like to admit.

Just like any other man cursed with sentience or specifically metacognition, we often go out of our way to seek a source, inception or experience to blame the failures, mistakes and unfavourable events in our life on.

In this scene, Anna gives Nemo her phone number and they parted ways. Nemo stood on the same spot Anna left him and watched her leave. After a while, he lowered his head to read the numbers (written in ink) on the piece of paper Anna handed him. It then begins to rain and a raindrop falls on the ink— washing the ink and ultimately the numbers off the now wet paper.

Nemo then assumes the role of narrator explaining to us just as the scene cuts to reveal an unemployed man in Brazil, boiling an egg. He explains to us, how this process of boiling the egg caused the water in the kettle to evaporate and this vapour eventually formed clouds. The very same clouds that'll make their way to Canada (and yes, clouds travel). The migrating clouds now sitting above Canada condensates, it rains and one of the raindrops washed away Anna's phone number on the piece piece of paper. This leaves Anna unreachable.

This scene attempts to explain just how the Butterfly Effect works. The Butterfly in this scenario was the boiling of the egg 2months ago. Nemo narrates that If the man had not boiled the egg, the clouds would not have formed and the raindrops would not have washed off Anna's number from the paper she gave him. Nemo insists, this boiling of the egg 2months ago was the beginning of his misfortune, The reason he will now go on to lose all contact with the one true love of his life. Granted, the unemployed Brazillian man had a hand in the series of event in the misfortune that befell Nemo 2months in the future but is it not convenient cherry picking, to blame it all on this event that happened 2months ago? Why not blame it on his decision to open the paper on the sidewalk 2minutes ago? or the boss of the then employed Brazillian firing him, which meant he'd spend the next day at home idle and craving eggs.

Now my main issue with this mental gymnastics (however true) is that Nemo sought only to blame someone else for his misfortune or to quench his feeling of guilt. Quite clearly, the Butterfly in this story could've been any moment leading up to the raindrop meeting the ink on the paper, any moment since the beginning of the Universe is culpable.

I personally like to view the Earth as this sea of consequences, no one single moment is seperate from the next. You're a consequence of your parents. Your parent's relationship is a consequence of (let's say) a mutual friend's party invitation during their time at university. That friend's party is a consequence of his/her parents doing the dirty at a specific time in history. Oh and your friend's parent's relationship was a consequence of the fact that they lived in the same city and got on the same train one afternoon because of a busy traffic. Oh and the busy traffic was a consequence of an accident and the accident a consequence of some drunk driving and so on ad-infinitum back to the birth of the Universe (you get the point). Every event in the universe is linked at some point since the Universe began. I mean, your life today is also a consequence of the fact you turned out to be a boy or a girl, you could have been either after conception. We don't really know who makes that decision, randomness? but that's a topic for another day.

Moving on... Nemo labelled the Brazilian man as the source of his misfortune, the orchestrator. We know with the Butterfly Effect this can't be the only truth because then we have to ask ourselves, why did the Brazilian man boil the egg? (Let's assume) his neighbour gifted him a crate of it the previous day, then the neighbor will become the orchestrator. For if the neighbour had not given him those eggs, maybe he would have had a sandwich instead. Perhaps nothing that involved boiling and evaporation.

Is every event since the beginning of the Universe to blame for everything we experience today? Can you truly blame anyone or anything for anything? Can you make the argument that everything is to blame for anything? Do you blame the bomber or the inventor of the bomb for the bombing? maybe the teacher or parent of the bomb's inventor. Hell maybe the military for weaponising a fancy scientific discovery. Maybe the government for have a military who would resort to such forms of deterrents.

Carl Sagan once said, "If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe." This is remarkably true for if you wish to make an apple pie using all of the usual ingredients including apples, dough, butter, sugar etcetera. You'd have to fetch them at the local grocery store, meaning you're not making an Apple pie from scratch, you had help on the way. You have not grown and harvested the apples yourself, or the sugar cane and wheat for that matter. Now even if you had done all of these, your apple tree depended on rainfall, sunlight and a certain soil nutrients to grow. These are factors not under your control but unless you can create your own sunlight and water. Now, to create your own sunlight and water, you would need to create a whole Universe by yourself.

Same applies to the Butterfly Effect and Nemo's situation. This means the birth of the Universe is the only true scratch or reason for any single particular event.

There is always an event responsible for whatever we are experiencing right now. I probably sent you this article and that's why you're reading it, but I only wrote it because I saw a film, but someone only wrote that film because blah blah blah (you get it) the phenomenon here is that it can all be traced back to the creation of the Universe. It has just been one long series of consequences. I refer to the Earth and the Universe at large as a sea of infinitely random consequences and when you play with infinity; you're bound to find perfection in randomness. It's like dice, if 6 is your aim, in infinite rolls you'll get a 6 and voila! perfection. Earth is the perfection in the Universe creating trillions of galaxies and even greater numbers of stars and planet. The Earth is an example of such perfection, the 6 in the infinite number of rolls. Life on a tiny rock in the habitable zone of its solar system lounging in the outer edges of the Milky Way Galaxy.

Finally I'd like to say ''sorry Nemo''. A million other events also influenced how that day turned out, the Brazilian man was just another piece of the puzzle and far from the very first piece or last for that matter.

Watch Mr. Nobody: Unemployed Brazilian Man scene here https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=DJhBpjxOfuI