The Blue Butterfly
 | Director Lea Pool
Pool Uses Discord to Create an Excellent Film about Unity while Etymologist Alan Osborne and 10-year old Pete Carlton Challenge Death and Hunt the Miracle Butterfly. |
2002 Alliance Atlantis Communications
by Codie Leonsch-Hartwig
Do miracles exist? And if they do, can you catch one? This is what Alan Osborne and terminally ill Pete Carlton, along with Pete's mother, Teresa, find out as they hunt the miraculous Blue Morpho Butterfly through the rain forest of South America. View Movie Trailer through IMDb.com
There are several unusual pieces to this film, not least of which is the discordance between actors, a discordance that cannot escape notice. From the beginning, the principle actors seem to have no sympathy with each other. The cast seems to fight within itself. This would represent a flaw in the casting except that it, instead, represents the integrity of the film. It is a visual representation of the meaning of the film, the theme of the movie. The discordance and disunity between the actors in the beginning of The Blue Butterfly is the result of deliberate directorial choices made by director Lea Pool, native of Geneve, Switzerland (Lost and Delirious). Further, it is the result of deliberate and excellent acting from William Hurt, Pascale Bussieres and Marc Donato.
In the beginning of the film, the actors portray the characters as being individuals who are independent and discordant, without unity with other people. They are sympathetic of the others' needs and situations, but, still, they are independent and out of accord, and un-united. This discord continues until the moment of epiphany when the mother makes what is an enormously hard decision to send her wheel-chair dependent son out into the tropical rain forest of South America with a the man they are following through wild and potentially dangerous terrain.
Epiphany is followed in due course by crisis. The man gets hurt and the boy must stand on his own: he must set limiting factors aside and come to the rescue of the man. As epiphany led to crisis, crisis leads to dissolution of discordant independence and to the moment of unity. The moment of unity comes when a vision of spearheads and potential fatality touches the boy.
In The Blue Butterfly, a boy, Pete Carlton, played by Marc Donato (White Oleander), who is a fiend for etymology (he collects bugs by the score) develops a brain tumor and is expected to live for only months longer. His individualistic and self-sacrificing mother, Teresa Carlton, played by Pascale Bussieres (primarily European films), who demonstratively loves her son boundlessly, devotes herself to helping him procure the dream of his heart: He wants to go into the jungles of South America with North America's premier etymologist, Alan Osborne, played by William Hurt (Syriana), to find the spectacular Blue Morpho Butterfly. Pete desires this because he has learned, and he believes, that the Blue Morpho is a miraculous butterfly that can unravel the puzzles of life--and dying--if you behold it for even a moment. He has so many inner questions about the meaning of being a living creature that he feels he must find and catch this miraculous Blue Morpho.
His mother agrees to find and persuade the etymologist and to then brave the dangers of the jungle, spending all her money, for her son's dream of a miracle.
The etymologist, under circumstances which cannot fail to impress him, reluctantly agrees to lead the expedition, even though it is too late in the butterfly season to hope for any success. The three, the adults not liking things or each other all that well, set out for the jungles of South America where they make headquarters in a village Alan Osborne knows well and where his friend, Alejo, played by Raoul Trujillo (The New World), lives with his motherless young daughter, played in her debut role by Marianella Jimenez. In this village they also meet Topo, a debut role for Gerardo Hernandez. From here, Osborne leads Pete and Teresa on day excursions to hunt the Blue Morpho.
Another odd discordance in the directing of The Blue Butterfly is that between the unity expressed within the two groups of people: one group is all harmony and sublime unity, the other is all dissonance. The group of South American villagers to whom the butterfly expedition travels is represented by Alejo, his daughter and Topo, the village elder cum medicine man cum story teller. It is these three that discuss the belief in the Blue Morpho's miraculous nature in right and enlightened terms, explaining how it is said that the Morpho grants miraculous wisdom and physical miracles.
Alejo's daughter further explains to Pete that it is in the attainment of unity that the miracle occurs: She explains that the miracle lies all around and in each being. Discord turning to unity is the theme and the meaning of the film.
Music (Stephen Endelman, DeLovely) in The Blue Butterfly is vibrant like the rain forest and the butterflies (except when they are drunk...). Music, rich and full, acts like a unifier in bringing the two groups together and in bringing them both together with the jungle around them. Endelman's music acts a central role demonstrating the integrity of the film: It is the one unified piece in a film that has intentionally disunified principle parts. Cinematographer Pierre Mignot (6th Day) and production designer Serge Bureau (Lost and Delirious) work in synchonicity with each other to develop the disunified individuality in the early parts and to capture the feeling of flight in pursuing the miracle of the Blue Morpho in the last portions The film editing, by Michel Arcand (Gospel of John), is one other unifying element in The Blue Butterfly: Arcand's editing choices make the divided parts flow with each other, bringing the scenes, like a ride on a river, to the final resolution.
One question remains after watching The Blue Butterfly. Pete says that they were "set up." After you watch the film you'll know who set them up, but the question that remains is was it for good or was it for ill? Were they set up to be harmed or to be benefited? One clue is that in The Blue Butterfly unity and miracle are presented as existing in symbiosis: each integrally dependent on the other as illustrated by what Osborne says while standing in the river, "No insect, no flower; no flower, no insect." Other clues (that won't spoil the film) is that the crisis comes before the unity, the unity comes before the miracle and the Blue Morpho alights beside Alejo's daughter.
The Blue Butterfly
is a brilliant screenplay and story, written by Pete McCormick (See Grace Fly), embodying a deep and profound meaning that goes beyond the true story upon which it was based. This meaning is important and of great relevance today in light of the discord that rocks our world over both global warming (and the discord caused by the footprint of global warming), and the metaphysical disunity as religious and political factions tear the world asunder. Would it were that instead of seeking that which is the captured and mounted trophy we would, as a world of individuals, seek the unity and miracle represented by the Blue Morpho and trade our discord for harmony.