12 MONKEYS
A film review by Serdar Yegulalp
Copyright 1997 Serdar Yegulalp
CAPSULE: Much ado about something, but what? Terry Gilliam's latest offering builds and builds towards some kind of incredible payoff, and gives us much to look at and adsorb along the way, but only burps instead of exploding.
Terry Gilliam is a rare bird: possibly gifted by genius, but at the same time hampered by far too much *near*-genius for his own good. TWELVE MONKEYS is a good example of this, a film of near-genius that has many moments of greatness but never quite finishes what it starts.
In one of his best performances, Bruce Willis is a member of a hive-like commune of criminals who live far underground in a future world that's been decimated by a mysterious disease. The scientists who run the place (all of whom look like mutant versions of the War Room staff in DR. STRANGELOVE) want to send Willis's character back in time to gather clues about how the disease was propagated. Willis's character also remembers something from his own childhood, a death in an airport at around the time of the outbreak, that he is itching to resolve. He is a lonely, longing fellow, one whom it turns out to be far easier to feel empathy for than we initially think.
Willis appears in Baltimore, 1990, and meets several intriguing characters. When thrown into an asylum, he meets Brad Pitt (in another excellent acting job), a certifiably insane fellow with more ideas than his head can possibly do justice to. He also meets Madeline Stowe, a doctor who takes a very strange and persistent interest in Cole. Beyond that, I'd be loathe to reveal any more -- and in fact, it'd be difficult to do so without extensive notes. The script becomes incredibly thorny and complicated at times, but Gilliam is an expert at making those convolutions seem clear and self-explanatory, especially in a nightmare flashback that changes every time we see it.
What makes the movie unsatisfying are two things. One, Gilliam's lack of on-screen restraint is legendary. He seems compelled to include things that aren't really thematically essential -- or at least he doesn't make their thematical need visible -- such as the extended insane-asylum sequences. I got the feeling they wound up in the script because Gilliam is a sucker for insane asylum sequences and the attendant over-acting. And two, the movie has a totally closed-ended ending -- meaning that everything gets tied up so completely that we sit there wondering, "Was that it?"
That, indeed, seems to have been it. If that's the point, then the setup was leading us astray. And while the movie is enjoyable to watch and never insulting or confusing, it doesn't quite fulfill its promise.
Two and a half out of four straitjackets.
syegul@ix.netcom.com EFNet IRC: GinRei http://serdar.home.ml.org another worldly device...
you can crush me as I speak/write on rocks what you feel/now feel this truth
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