DVD Review Of 12 Monkeys
Chris Marker’s 1962 short film, La Jetee, is one of the most
interesting and exciting films ever made. Its use of still photographs
for all but a few seconds of its near half hour length, allows a
remarkable bit of viewer empathy to occur. In recall, the viewer
actually animates the film. Director Terry Gilliam is one of the most
interesting and exciting film directors in America over the last few
decades, and his 1995 film, 12 Monkeys, ‘inspired’ by Marker’s film, is
an excellent film that, because of a forced love tale and a bit of
predictability in certain scenes, falls short of being great cinema.
Nonetheless, it shows what a person with a singular vision can do in
the arts, even when one’s vision is almost wholly derived from another
source.
The plot involves time travel, and,
unfortunately, this is the film’s weakest element, as it relies on many
of the standard circular plot developments that other classic sci fi
films involving time travel, such as the Planet Of the Apes and
Terminator series, fell into. That said, Gilliam wisely hedges hi bets
by opening the film with a faux epigraph, supposedly taken from the
notes made about a psychiatric patient. We soon find out that the
patient is James Cole (Bruce Willis). Like La Jetee, the film opens and
closes with a scene of a young boy’s eyes watching the shooting death
of a man at an airport. Those who have seen Marker’s film will
immediately know that the boy and shot man are the same person. Even
those who have not seen La Jetee, will early in the film, suspect this
‘reality.’
Cole is a convict in a subterranean, post-apocalyptic earth, set in the
2020 or 2030s, years after a 1996 virus, let loose by a terrorist group
called The Army Of The Twelve Monkeys, is thought to have killed over
five billion humans, and forced the survivors underground to survive.
To gain a pardon, Cole ‘volunteers’ for missions to the surface of the
planet, as well as time travel missions, to help retrieve a pure sample
of the original virus so scientists can inoculate the species and
return to the planet’s surface. On his first jaunt back in time, to
1996, he is imprisoned in an asylum and meets up with Dr. Kathryn
Railly (Madeleine Stowe), as well as a fellow inmate named Jeffrey
Goines (Brad Pitt), a schizophrenic with delusions of wiping out
mankind, via a virus his scientist virus may create. He escapes that
year, because he was supposed to land in 1990. When he goes back he
kidnaps Railly, and they go on the lam, looking for Jeff and his Army.
They find him, after several murders, much violence, and the two
characters switching positions. Cole believes he may be mentally ill,
while Railly believes he is sane and from the future, after several
things he says pan out, and she discovers a bullet that she extracted
from Cole’s leg was fired in World War One, another time frame Cole was
accidentally shipped to.
The duo find out that The Army Of The Twelve Monkeys, that Jeff
founded, is not the cause of the pandemic that wipes out most of
humanity. All they do is free some zoo animals, whereas an assistant in
the lab of Jeff’s father, a redhead named Dr. Peters (David Morse), is
the real culprit. Cole and Railly bump into him at the airport, after
Cole has been given a gun by another time traveler sent to monitor him,
and when Cole attempts to shoot and stop Peters, he instead is shot to
death by a security guard at the airport, as a younger version of
himself watches his own death. Railly then stares lovingly at the young
Cole. Peters make sit aboard the airplane, headed to all the cities
known to have been the places where the virus first erupted. He sits
down next to a woman (Carol Florence), whom the viewer knows is one of
Cole’s interrogators from the future. She claims that mankind is doomed
and that she is in ‘insurance.’ In this manner, the film does mildly
divert from the time travel gambit of needing to change the past to
save the future. In this film, the past must be maintained to save the
future. The film then ends as it began, looking into the eyes of the
young James Cole.
The ending works on many levels, even if somewhat predictable. First,
is the female future interrogator on the plane there to make sure that
Peters delivers the virus, so that she can insure her own future, and
that mankind will return to the surface? Or has it all been a pointless
exercise since the future apparently is immutable? Cole, it seems, is
thus merely sent back in time as an X factor to ensure the virus
spreads and that humanity can reclaim the planet in the 21st Century.
The future scientists then are betting on the devil they know, rather
than that they do not know, hoping that Cole’s unwitting unmasking of
the real villain, Peters, will save the future’s future, rather than
messing with the standard scenario of changing time and possibly making
the human doomsday even worse, if not unrecoverable from. Such moments
and aspects are strong points in the screenplay penned by David and
Janet Peoples, and Gilliam is rumored to have lamented that he did not
pen the script, one of the few in his career that became films of his.
He also made great use of abandoned buildings in Philadelphia for some
of the scenes in the film. The cinematography, by longtime Gilliam
collaborator Roger Pratt, is solid, if not spectacular. The music, by
Paul Buckmaster, is a bit better. But, in reality, the film rises on
its good, if flawed, screenplay, and some excellent acting
performances. Chief among them is Bruce Willis, as Cole. While Brad
Pitt got the raves as the lunatic Jeff Goines, that role is off the
rack nutjob. Willis has the much tougher role, and proves he is a very
good actor, when given good material. Stowe’s acting is also very good,
although the forced love story (a carryover from Marker’s film, as is
the tangent with Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo) drags her role down from
co-conspirator to ‘movie babe’ more than once. Other good performances
are turned in by Christopher Plummer, as the Brad Pitt character’s
father, and Frank Gorshin, as Stowe’s boss at the asylum.
The DVD, put out by Universal, is solid. The 130 minute film is shown
in a 1.85:1 aspect ratio, and well transferred. There’s a theatrical
trailer, as well as trailer for other films, as well as a long making
of feature called The Hamster Factor & Other Tales Of Twelve
Monkeys. The best feature, however, is the commentary track (carried
over from the laserdisc version of the film) by Gilliam and producer
Charles Roven. Gilliam shows that, along with Francis Ford Coppola,
he’s amongst the best directors as film commentarians around, for his
remarks are not only very entertaining, but quite on the mark in
regards to not only the particular film at hand that he is discussing,
but the whol bastardized process of filmmaking, as Hollywood does it.
Roven is also quite good, and often does well in expounding upon the
many tidbits that Gilliam mentions but leaves behind. All in all, one
of the better film commentaries for a major Hollywood film going;
thankfully bereft of the usual critical fellatio that infects such
‘extras.’.
12 Monkeys is not a great film, due to previously mentioned flaws, and
some other minor continuity issues, as well as the sometimes
heavyhanded ties of James Cole to Jesus Christ (both JC’s). Also, a
caveat to anyone who has seen Marker’s film, for this film will,
unfortunately, seem far less adventurous artistically than it really
is. But it works both as a time travel fable and the depiction of an
insane mind because event though, in the film’s diegetic reality, Cole
seems to be a genuine time traveler, he is almost assuredly a madman,
as well. As is Dr. Railly, who violates one of the cardinal rules of
her profession, becoming emotionally and sexually involved with her
patient. It is also one of the rare films that benefited from later
historical events; in this case, obviously 9/11, for both Cole and
Peters provide excellent depictions of the differing halves of the
criminal/terrorist mindsets of believing in their own realities and the
rectitude of their actions, despite the violence incurred. Thus, while
12 Monkeys is not a film in a league with other sci fi films such as
2001: A Space Odyssey, nor is it as daring as Gilliam’s own earlier
Brazil, it is a film of quality. And the fact that it was spawned in
Hollywood shows that randomness can be a very, very good thing, in or
out of the time travel scenario.
