FauxNixon

Terry Gilliam’s 1995 Twelve Monkeys went largely unnoticed by most of the cinema-going public, but contains one of the best performances of Brad Pitt’s career and one of the best and most original performances in, at that time, Bruce Willis‘ career.  Also starring Madeleine Stowe, Twelve Monkeys is the story of a man named James Cole (Willis), a convict in the future who is drafted as a volunteer to go back in time to help restore his present-time.  Forgive me if this gets confusing, but it’s confusing to watch too, in a rewarding way.

There are four time periods in Twelve Monkeys: the first is a dystopian one in which 5 billion people died of a lethal, engineered virus in 1995 and 1996 and drives the remaining one percent or so of the survivors underground, leaving the surface levels to return to their natural state; 1990, the time in which James Cole is initially sent back to in error, where he is arrested and institutionalized and treated by Madeleine Stowe’s character; a third time period which is Dr. Kathryn Railly’s present, where James Cole again appears, this time having successfully been transported to the proper time to obtain a sample of the original engineered virus so it can be used as a vaccine in Cole’s present; and a fourth which takes place in the trenches of the Western Front during World War I, where Cole is shot with that a rifle bearing bearing all of the characteristics of that time period.

While in the psychiatric institution in 1990, James Cole meets Jeffrey Goines (Pitt), whose father is a famous virologist and who Cole believes is the one responsible for the group he believes created and distributed the virus: the Army of the Twelve Monkeys.  In fact, in Cole’s telling Goines his own story, it is possible that in a paradoxical way, Cole is the one who is responsible for planting it in Goines’ head that such a virus should be created and used against humanity.

The 1990 time period is brief, as Cole is recalled to his own present rather quickly and asked to go again, this time assured he would be transported properly.  The Western Front time period is very brief, lasting no more than a few minutes, before Cole is transported to Railly’s present, where the bulk of the movie takes place.  Cole kidnaps Railly and the two are on the move, trying to find the Army of the Twelve Monkeys and eventually, things Cole couldn’t possibly know are shown to Railly as something Cole does indeed know and she begins to believe him.

The authenticity of each of these time periods is left ambiguous purposefully by Gilliam, but he does book-end the movies with the same, recurring dream of James Cole: a child running in an airport terminal, alarms going off, and a female character yelling “No!” as gun shots go off.

All that said, the narrative is confusing, layered and very, very complex with a lot of ambiguity.  It contains absolutely fantastic direction by Terry Gilliam, who forces his actors, especially Willis and Pitt into one of the greatest, and the greatest, performances of their careers and brings us a movie that takes repeated viewings before we can properly understand and decipher it.