I don't have much experience with Terry Gilliam films; the only other movie I've seen directed by him is Monty Python and the Holy Grail. I figured before sitting down to watch Twelve Monkeys that it probably wasn't going to be anything like that.
Twelve Monkeys is an interesting and complex movie, filled with fantastic imagery and design.
Humanity is almost wiped out in 1997 by a terrible disease. in the world left behind, the remaining humans migrate underground. Bruce Willis plays James Cole, a man selected by the subterranean society, first to go outside and investigate possible causes of the virus, and then to travel back to 1996 to figure out the original virus strain so that they might be able to fight it.
The mechanics of time travel are interesting here; they don't explain how humanity became capable of time travel, you just accept it. They do, however, make the time travel internally consistent, using a fixed timeline. When Cole travels back, he doesn't try to change anything because it already happened; he's here to find out more about the virus so that humanity is able to fight it in his time.
There's a lot of conflict on Cole's journey, the first of which is when he is sent back to 1990 instead by mistake. The process of time travel also apparently takes its toll on a person, because Cole is found, drooling and keeled over, before being taken to a mental hospital after taking out several police officers. This is where he meets Jeffrey Goines (Brad Pitt).
Pitt is a particular highlight in the acting department, unhinged, crooked-eye, and monologuing about consumerism and moral relativism. If you took Tyler Durden and put him in a mental hospital, you'd get Jeffrey Goines, which is interesting because this movie actually came out years before Fight Club.
I won't spoil any more of the plot, because it's complex and interesting, and I want people who haven't seen this movie to see it, so I'll just talk about some of the other great parts of the movie.
The cinematography is bizarre, choosing to use Dutch angles in every other shot, but in this particular case it works; it adds to the sense of disorientation that the time travel offers, and the way the movie instills doubt in the viewer about Cole's state of mind.
Best of all, though, is the set design. The look of the subterranean dystopia is really awesome to behold. There's a lot of rust, pipes, and clockwork machinery. It looks like something out of Metro 2033, which is reinforced by the fact that the world above is covered in snow and people can only go up there in odd, plastic, self-contained suits. The destroyed world is tragically beautiful, truly something to behold.
The Verdict: Weird and wacky, Twelve Monkeys is an excellent movie, with incredible vision of a rusty, subterranean future world and a complicated plot that deals with causality and draws strong performances from its principal cast. It's definitely a movie worth a watch, unless time paradoxes happen to be some sort of deal-breaker for you.
Rating: 8/10
Published July 10th, 2016
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