When a film is able to make me look past Ashton Kutcher playing a serious role, there is a lot that is probably worth saying about it, but for the sake of the class (and everyone's time) I'll stick to writing about how I see the movie relating to our course.
The Butterfly Effect is a good follow up to Kindred because, at least for some of the film, it deals with the time travel paradox. Evan's "black outs" are actually when he has gone back into one of his memories to make an adjustment.
However, the thing that makes me think about the movie the most, is it's assumption of reality. Essentially, Evan's memories are changing. We are told this in the neurologist's office when the structure of his brain has changed. When we encode a new memory, new neurological synapses are created, re-linked, or strengthened, making our brains physically different with each new experience. Evan's brain completely transforms each time he revisits and changes a memory--this also explains his nosebleeds. Since we are viewing the movie through Evan, it is a possibility that only his brain is changing, not his physical world. It is known in psychology that people can manipulate their memories, or even create entirely new memories. It can be argued that only Evan's PERCEPTION of reality is changing and the viewer is taken along for the ride.
This is an extremely Idealistic view, and I'll admit that it's difficult to make the ending of the director's cut fit into it. However, that ending also unravels the time paradox, which forces the viewer to find a new frame of reference in which to analyze the film.
Thinking about it, The Butterfly Effect ties together many concepts from our reading. There's memory manipulation from Aura, the aforementioned time travel from Kindred, and the need for multiple, wide frames of refrence from The Man in the High Castle.
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