Time's Paradox

Former Monty Python member Terry Gilliam has become famous for directing off-beat, often surreal films. For a look at exactly how strange his work can be see Brazil, Time Bandits, and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

Perhaps Gilliam's most bizarre, and absurd film to date, 12 Monkeys, was inspired by a short film called La Jatee. The screenplay for Monkeys was written by David Webb Peoples. In many ways it is similar to his work on Bladerunner; they both portray the future as a dark, wet, dripping, world of barely controlled chaos.

Monkeys begins in the future. David Cole (Bruce Willis) is an inmate in some sort of ramshackle prison. We are told that all the worlds occupants live below ground to escape a plague that killed five billion people in 1996.

Cole has been chosen to be sent back in time to discover the origin of the plague. Due to some form of malfunction he arrives, not in 1996, but in 1990. He is arrested and placed in an asylum. While there he meets two very important people:

Jeffrey Goines (Brad Pitt), and Dr. Railly (Madeline Stowe). After some time in the asylum Cole is called back to the future (present?, it's hard to keep track).

A second attempt at time travel finally lands him in 1996, by way of 1917. He spends a few moments in a trench during world war I, and there takes a gunshot to the leg.

Again he crosses paths with Dr. Railly. It begins to seem as if their lives are somehow connected. Cole has visions of her. He is, has always been, haunted by dreams of seeing a man shot. The man is being chased by a woman; Cole begins to realize that the woman in his dream is Railly.

This is, in many ways, an extraordinary film. No brief synopsis can truly catch the flavor or feeling of it. Watching 12 Monkeys is a bit like being trapped inside the mind of a lunatic.
Gilliam does a wonderful job creating realism, while pulling that very realism out from under you. This seeming impossibility is only one of several paradox's the film has to offer.

The acting is great. This is the first film in which Brad Pitt seemed to be a real actor, as opposed to just a pretty face.

I once heard someone say that Bruce Willis with a hairpiece is a movie star, bald he is an actor. In this film he is as bald as a cue ball.

I give this film one very simple, very high praise: you will continue to think about it for days.