Film - 12 Monkeys

As I mentioned, we watched 12 Monkeys recently. I haven't seen it in probably five years, so there was a lot that I didn't remember. I mostly just remembered that I really liked it.

I really enjoy Terry Guilliam, and this is definitely my favorite Guilliam movie, with Brazil a somewhat close second. Both are dystopic films, which is pretty much my favorite genre whether we're talking TV, books or film, and Guilliam does a fantastic job of just making the viewer feel out-of-sorts, which makes the bizarre future he creates seem even more bizarre.





Dustin and I were discussing the film that 12 Monkeys is based on. It's a french short film called La Jete. It's kind of experimental, using still images for most of the film, except for one moment when a woman's eye blinks. I loved that film, even though it was more experimental than I usually go for. Dustin was far from impressed. But if nothing else, he still appreciates it for inspiring 12 Monkeys.

The reason I bring up La Jete is that that one eye blinking in the original film is supposed to highlight the main question posed by both films - how do we know what is real? In 12 Monkeys, John Cole thinks he knows what reality is, but because he travels back in time - and then tells everyone that he has traveled back in time - he's considered crazy and put in an asylum. Eventually, he convinces himself that he is crazy and that he's not from the future at all. But he does this more because the future he comes from is so bleak that he wants to believe that it's not real. He wants to believe that the past he keeps visiting is the only reality, because he's happier there than he is in the future. He loves a woman there, and the human race hasn't been all but wiped out. It's a better reality for him. But is it the real reality? The movie certainly takes the position that it isn't. But from the perspective of John Cole, there's no real proof that it's not. If people tell him that he's crazy, and he starts to believe it, then there's no real way for him to convince himself that the future is real. Kathryn, the psychiatrist, can prove to herself that he's actually time-travelling, because she sees the photo of him from WWI, and he just disappears when he gets brought back to the future. But even if she explains that to John, if he truly believed he was delusional, he might just believe that he was imagining her showing him the proof, because it aided his delusion. That's not really how the movie plays out, but it's interesting to consider.

It wouldn't be a blog post about 12 Monkeys without mentioning Brad Pitt's performance. I think that was the first time I was really impressed with him as an actor. That's not really fair, because he had already done Seven and Legends of the Fall - both great movies. You can make fun of me for Legends of the Fall, but I stand by my opinion. But this role was just different. He'd always been the pretty boy, love interest guy, and this movie was a departure from that. A brilliant departure.