Mandela Effect Movie Mind Job? Do you know what the Mandela Effect is? The Mandela Effect got its name from Nelson Mandela, you know, the freedom fighter from South Africa who died in prison fighting for African rights. Sure! We all know him. Wait, um, noooo. He didn’t die in prison. Did you remember him dying in prison? Because that is what the Mandela Effect is. Actually, the Mandela Effect is less known for Mandela than it is known for like 20 other examples. Was it Looney Toons? Or Looney Tunes? It was Fruit Loops, right? Wrong, it was Froot Loops. And it was all these little mind-jobby, head scratching, societal false collective memories, that really got the creators of the movie Mandela Effect thinking.
Did I just Dox Judy with that screenscrape? Oh I hope not! hahaha. I think Judy Thomas is a generic enough name, right? Sheesh… now I’m worried. Judy! just tell me if you get stalkers at your house and I’ll take it down. But it was Judy’s idea that I revisit this movie. And I’m glad I did, or I would have missed out on this fabulous ending. You see, the first time I started watching it, I bailed, thinking that the deep tie to the Mandela Effect was a bit too forced, and weird. But the second time around, it made a lot more sense. So, thanks Judy!
OK, so the Mandela effect asks the question – what if, similar to all of these false memories, we meld that into a story of loss and grief? The wild ride for him? Begins with the Berenstein Bears. He’s CERTAIN, it was the Berenstein Bears. This one little word would normally be lost in the weird shuffle of the details of life. But Brendan and his wife, Claire, are grieving. Here. Have a trailer, and then meet me on the other side if you’ve watched the film already.
First, tip of the hat to Judy, who reached out and originally told me about this movie. And then I neglected her, and her recommendation, FOREVER, and only got off my butt when she pinged me again. Thanks for sticking with it Judy! It paid off.
Mandela Effect Movie Walkthrough
The movie opens with Brendan (played by Chaflie Hofheimer, Black Hawk Down, and The Village), who is trying to sort through the details of his daughter’s bedroom things. But this isn’t going very well because, the reason for said sorting is that she passed away. She drowned in the ocean when trying to retrieve a doll from the waves. His wife, Claire (Aleksa Palladino, Halt and Catch Fire – which I loved. I literally have never talked about Halt here?? Good lord I suck at this.) is also grieving… but when Brendan finds a copy of “The Berenstein Bears,” he realizes that the title wasn’t that at all, but rather, “The Berenstain Bears,” she doesn’t know if she can cope anymore. Why? Because he is CERTAIN, that time has changed. That there has been some sort of ripple of falsity, that has snapped through time and space. Some sort of something that has changed. Later, Brendan and Claire find more of these massive shifts in time and space – FOR EXAMPLE – Curious George, OBVIOUSLY had a tail. Duh. In their reality anyway he did. Because now? All of a sudden? He doesn’t. What is going on in the universe? Something is horribly wrong.
Push comes to shove though, when, Brendan and Claire have a disagreement about where one of their photographs was taken. Brendan decides that, you know what, they aren’t disagreeing… actually, what is happening is that these discrepancies are caused by the creation of parallel universes. Because, OF COURSE THEY ARE. Worse? Brenda knows for a fact, that their daughter, Sam, didn’t really die. And that Sam continues to live in a universe. And so when Brendan tracks down a scientist that espouses similar theories about life, the universe, and everything, Claire and Matt (Claire’s brother-in-law) are certain that Brendan has gone off the deep end now.
Dr. Fuch’s (Clarke Peters) research into this wild parallel universe theory, includes evidence that the universe is actually a computer simulation. (If you are curious, this idea is a well known school of thought in philosophy (minus the computer bit) founded by Descartes. He basically stated that the phenomenon of dreaming is a key bit of evidence that tells us that we should be skeptical of everything we know and love about the world… that it all could be just that, a dream. And any surety you have, you should be skeptical of.) And OF COURSE the Berenstein (Berenstain?) bears are keys to this computer simulation theory. But yes, you see, the computer simulation isn’t perfect. (Black cat glitches in the matrix anyone?) These anomalies though only happen when individual people in the simulation begin to get suspicious of what is really going on, of what the true nature of the universe really is. Brendan and Fuchs (come on, that’s just too easy) theorize that they could overload the simulation by overloading it with a computer app. So they enlist someone at the college to use their quantum computer to try just that.
But along the way? Brendan isn’t doing well at all. These new realizations for Brendan come with a taxing load on his mind. So much so that he starts to see visions of Sam. Visions that no one else can see. And his marriage is going in the toilet as well. Then, one day, Brendan wakes to find that Sam really is alive, and that everyone else can see her as well. He’s not going insane! (oh please.) Well, this weird twist only gets worse the next time Brendan heads back to visit with Fuchs again, and he is met by a woman that informs him that Dr. Fuchs committed suicide over two months ago. Ah. But. Brenden had just spoken to Fuchs hours ago. BUT OF COURSE, the simulation is just rewriting history again. Duh. Occam’s Razor. So Brendan heads back to his house and finishes scripting the program that will interrupt the simulation. Then, he breaks into the campus and uses the quantum computer to run his mind-jobby subroutine. And as soon as he starts the program, tweaks, glitches, problems begin to appear in reality. And when he runs home he finds his daughter alive and well – but his wife is completely coming unglued because of the reality-glitches. But as the trio are holding on to each other, the simulation completely nose dives and crashes.
Then. After a bit. The entirety of the simulation reboots, and starts all over again, and we watch as the simulation recreates the history of the universe. As the movie comes to a close, we re-watch the scene… the key moment at the beach… where Sam died the first time. But this time? Brendan insists that his daughter leave her Curious George doll behind. And notice? Curious George has no tail? And this time, through the simulation, Sam survives the encounter at the beach, Brendan, his wife, and his daughter slide past the chaos of that day, and they happily continue on again. Phew.
Mandela Effect Movie Mind Job Explained
In the mindjob space of indie movies, grief plays a seminal part in so many of the screenplays that we see. Why? Because, as humans, we become comfortable with what we know. We fall in love with family, with that girl you rode that merry-go-round with… you know the one outside that K-mart, the 25-cent ride one? The night of your prom? When instead of going to that after-party, you took her outside K-mart instead, and rode it round and round, just because you thought it would be a laugh. But now she’s gone. And that special family member? They are gone too. And it derails life, the universe, and everything.
I have a moment in my career that will always be my favorite. I led a group of brilliant web developers. We built crazy stuff. We had nerf dart wars at 2am during our deployments. But that is gone now. We’ve all drifted off. Moved on. They still are all important to me. But an email catching up, and those days are different entirely. You know? As we get older, the normalcy of life is, by definition, just being gradually ripped away from us. (Saddest words I’ll type this week, I’m sure.) It’s not that we are all dying (which we are, this is something different though) – but rather that the things we’ve come to love all just generally end. Your kids grow older, and move away. Those big family gatherings that once were so comfortable, and fun, creak, and groan, and shatter. Eventually… over time the cycles of life just grind up the normal things that we once held so dear.
Brendan’s daughter, Sam, is one of those things. It’s a more tragic example. But it’s still one of those things. She dies accidentally and he comes completely unglued (which is understandable) as a result. I personally love the idea of the glitch in the matrix getting expanded and fleshed out utilizing the theories of the Mandela Effect. Curious George’s tail is just a symptom of a larger systemic problem in the universe. Because, you see, being finite beings, like we are, we can’t know how this entire universe got created. The Big Bang? I’m sorry, but that is high quality bullshit. Fine, it’s Grade-A science. Whatever. But it literally explains nothing. Where did the teaspoon of matter that exploded come from in the first place? I stand on the side of the Grand Canyon and stare at the glory that is, and you tell me about a Big Bang? Literally tells me zero things. Nothing. I mean, we aren’t idiots. So, why not a grand simulation? Devs dealt with this mental problem better than any show or movie I’ve ever seen. It might as well be an infinite number of permutations, all run by a computer program holding them all together (if barely). Right? A Big Bang. Computer simulation. A God? We have about the same amount of control, and we have just as much evidence for one as the other. (Personally I choose the latter, rather than the two former… but, I get it.)
Brendan is broken by grief. I don’t know what I’d do if I lost a child. Hell, I recently lost my job, and I was surprised at how un-mooring that experience can be. And it’s just a job. But to lose a child? To lose a spouse? A parent? It could unhinge a person completely. But where the Mandela Effect right turns is that it actually posits some alternative to the reality that we all know and are intimately aware of. The funny thing is this – who’s to say that the movie is wrong? Not you. Not me. And I mean this literally. There is no way to counter this movie’s theory on the world. You lack the vantage point necessary to rebut this idea. Your perspective is myopically locked into what you can see and experience… and this idea is basically saying that you can’t see everything necessary to understand that this is in fact what is happening. I mean, check out this quick definition of “Simulation hypothesis” from Wikipedia:
The simulation hypothesis or simulation theory is the proposal that all of reality, including the Earth and the rest of the universe, could in fact be an artificial simulation, such as a computer simulation. Some versions rely on the development of a simulated reality, a proposed technology that would be able to convince its inhabitants that the simulation was “real.” The simulation hypothesis bears a close resemblance to various other skeptical scenarios from throughout the history of philosophy. The hypothesis was popularized in its current form by Nick Bostrom. The suggestion that such a hypothesis is compatible with all of our perceptual experiences is thought to have significant epistemological consequences in the form of philosophical skepticism. Versions of the hypothesis have also been featured in science fiction, appearing as a central plot device in many stories and films. The hypothesis popularized by Bostrom is very disputed, with, for example, theoretical physicist Sabine Hossenfelder calling it pseudoscience[1] and cosmologist George F. R. Ellis stating that ″[the hypothesis] is totally impracticable from a technical viewpoint″ and that ″protagonists seem to have confused science fiction with science. Late night pub discussion is not a viable theory.″
There is a buffet of big words here – but the key phrase that you should pay attention to is the word PHILOSOPHICAL SKEPTICISM. Doubt. To innately doubt the deep inner workings of the assumptions inherent to how we are told things work is what this movie is really all about. And a certain level of skepticism is really healthy. At least, I believe so anyway. But this guy Nick Bostrom? Dude is full-on mentally unhinged. Wicked smart guy. But the academic approach to justifying full-on insanity? (Just read two of his papers and I think I lost some grey matter in the endeavor.) Regardless, we all have to have faith. If you are a Theist? You have to have faith to believe in God. If you are an A-theist, then you have to have faith to not believe in God. If you are someone that believes in this simulation hypothesis, you have to have faith (lots and lots of it) in order to help link all the pieces together and make sense of it from start to finish. But we are all in this together.
Personally, the simplest explanation to this movie is grief. (Starfish anyone? Bueller? Anyone?) Brendan is broken, mentally. And the older I get, the more I begin to understand how someone could have a complete and total break with reality. My assumption is that the actual events… the story behind the story of what we are shown here… is that Brendan, and family are doing well. Until the day at the beach when Sam dies. And then, this is where actual events depart from what we are seen in the film. Brendan then begins to have a psychotic break (represented by the minor anomalies that he witnesses in the Curious George tail details, etc. We watch as his wife sees what is happening. And we know that everyone else but Brendan sees how he is losing it. He even goes so far as to invent a living-dead person with the perfect simulation theory to solve the problem of his dead daughter. “Quantum Computing,” “Philosophical Skepticism,” sure… whatever words, theories, and academic “learning” is necessary to bring her back from the dead. But really? He was admitted long ago. Or should have been. He’s doodling on padded walls at this point. Foaming and frothing at the mouth, totally intent on bringing his dead daughter back from the dead. So, yeah, sorry if you went with that happy ending… but I’m not having any of it! hahaha.
If you really liked Mandela Effect – and want other movies like it? First start with Starfish. After you watch that, then instantly hit play on the film Columbus. If you don’t love either of these films, you can have my car. (Me: “Judge, sir… look, that was called HYPERBOLE. Bob just came and took my car. And I don’t even believe he didn’t like either of those movies.” Bob: “I might have liked them a little… but he said I could have his car if I didn’t “LOVE” them.” Judge: “I watched them last night, give the car back. No one is taking his car… they are brilliant.” Me: “Thanks Mr. Judge of my dreams…”) And, better yet, I really think you need to write me into your will for suggesting just one of them to you. But TWO? Man.
Edited by: CY