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Retro SciFi Film of the Week…
12 Monkeys (1995)
Magical realism and unrelenting dysphoria characterize this '90s time-travel sci-fi about a guy who tries to go back in time to help correct a massive pandemic that happened in the future. The attention to detail in this film is extraordinary. The writing, the acting, cinematography, the score, special effects, art design; everything in this film is so tight; very well done. Terry Gilliam deserves praise for his direction, for which he had great creative latitude during production. In fact it's so effective at creating a feeling of unease I think it requires a content warning for people who are under stress or who otherwise may be vulnerable to unsettling content. But there’s plenty of comedy for those who enjoy demented humor.
Brad Pitt had the most demanding role, I think, with lots of rapid dialogue playing an over-the-top delusional crazy guy. Bruce Willis, the main protagonist, also played a guy who is losing touch with reality. Madeleine Stowe, who plays a psychiatrist opposite Willis' character, is absolutely flawless. All the actors in this film did a very good job even in the minor rolls. I saw only one flawed bit performance in the whole film.
There were two societal phenomena happening when this film was produced in the 1990s – animal rights activism was at its height, and the Rodney King beating and subsequent riots had just occurred. Pitt’s character plays the leader of an eponymous underground animal rights group (Army of the Twelve Monkeys), which is apparently planning a horrendous act.
The film features a lot of black actors, which was unusual for films in the early 90s. I think filmmakers at the time were intentionally trying to correct for past racial bias in the film industry in the wake of the Rodney King beating. However, none of the black players in this film had major roles, only minor parts. None of the black players played any of the many scientists and doctors in the story, they played mostly cops, orderlies and such. I counted twelve credited black roles in the film, which I’m sure was a coincidence and the producers had no intent to denigrate. (ambiguous sarcasm)
The film presents overshadowing stereotypes of people who have mental illness, a trend that continues to this day in filmmaking. The single female protagonist is also stereotyped as a mostly weak and submissive character even though she plays a psychiatrist which should be an authority figure in this context. (In all fairness, her character evolves considerably.)
However, in spite of it’s gaffs on political correctness (which were common in the 1990s), I think it’s such a well made film that it’s well worth watching.
Accessible video description:
a man (Willis) in a hazmat suit in a winter environment stoops down near some equipment, a bear startles him and he panics. Cut to a closeup of the central arch in Fre Carnevale’s “The Ideal City” as a woman’s voice reads Edward FitzGerald’s Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, the camera slowly zooms out to show the full painting and an old white woman reading to a small group of people seated on folding chairs in Walters Art Museum, a subtitle says, “Baltimore April 1990”. A beeper goes off as a white brunette woman in a little black dress looks at her beeper message, stands up and fumbles as she awkwardly walks out. As she walks by a man wearing silver shoes, her shoes inexplicably turn from black to silver. Then Willis and Pitt are in a mental institution and a black man with a gray beard wearing formal attire talks about not being from outer space with goofy looks on his face. Cut to old black and white cartoons with crazy characters. Then a guard at a desk reads a newspaper with a man on stilts in the background changing lightbulbs in a hallway as Willis stumbles to an elevator, the guard tell him it’s not working, but the guard’s appearance subtly changes from one face to another, his newspaper’s headline says, “Bat Child Found in Cave” with a scary photo. then Willis and Stowe are in a car, Willis has sad expressions while Stowe has incredulous expressions. Fade to Pitt with long hair wearing dark clothes and a black stocking cap as he explains his theory of predictive neuro-analytics, he grabs his crotch in a funny gesture, tosses a globe to the floor and walks around the room making exaggerated gestures. then a small logo for the film appears and the camera slowly zooms in, it is red silhouettes of monkeys arranged in a circle with the title “Twelve Monkeys” over it.
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(fair use, unauthorized trailer)
12 Monkeys spoilers, Patsplaining
***** spoilers *****
A little bit more on the economic and political situation around the time that this film was made... There was a deep recession in the early 1990s, and then the Rodney King beating and riots occurred during the recession in 1991. So Hollywood, which had pretty much excluded black people from their films up until that time, changed things up very quickly because they were afraid of a revolution. So they started putting more black people into their movies, and this film, 12 Monkeys, was one that had a lot more black people in it than many mainstream Hollywood movies.
I don't know if the title of the film relates to that or not. It's possible. If I knew for sure that it did, I would not recommend the film at all for that reason alone. But I’m not sure, thus the ambiguous sarcasm in the original post.
Also of note is that Frank Gorshin played a supporting role in 12 Monkeys. Gorshin was a guest star on Star Trek in 1969 in an episode titled, “Let That Be Your Last Battlefield”, which was one of the more memorable episodes of the original series. The narrative of that episode, which featured aliens who were black on the left half of their bodies and white on the right half, and vis-a-versa, was a naked metaphor for the absurdity of racial prejudice, which was a top issue during the revolution of the late 1960s and early 1970s in the US. This indicates to me that race was on the minds of the producers of 12 Monkeys, and they wanted to send a hint to that effect to their audience. Also in the film was a quick image of a TV screen showing news coverage of the riots – another hint about the undercurrents surrounding the making of the film.
This type of major change in the way that Hollywood treats black people in film has happened at least three times in history that I know of. It happened near the end of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s; it happened after the Rodney King beating and the subsequent riots; and it happened most recently again in response to the Black Lives Matter movement. But in between those inflection points, Hollywood has been really racist. The racism got even worse during Obama’s presidency.
This film is also partly about animal rights activists, which were very active during the time the film was made. I think some of the people involved in the film are supportive of animal rights. Even though the activists were portrayed as crazy people (along with just about everyone else in the film), ultimately in the story they were mostly benign, and were not the ones who released the deadly virus which caused the pandemic.
Both the fight against racism and the animal rights movement share a common philosophical core tenet, which is opposition to the oppression of individuals for who they are – speciesism and racism are cut from the same cloth. Alice Walker has written some about this and there is a book on the subject titled, “The Dreaded Comparison” (1988; Marjorie Spiegel, Alice Walker), and some more recent titles, too.
12 Monkeys spoilers, Patsplaining
There were also three bit players in this unauthorized trailer; Irma St. Paule, who plays the woman reading poetry, Fred Strother, who plays the crazy guy from Pluto, and the guard at the elevator, whose name I’m unsure of because the credits are unclear.
The magical realism in this film comes from the very subtle or ambiguously unreal things that happen. Magical realism doesn't include things that are acknowledged to be unusual by the characters or the narrative. The filmmakers of 12 Monkeys used magical realism to create a feeling of unease or confusion in the audience.
In this trailer, there are three examples; the bear suddenly appearing behind the guy in the hazmat suit (there wasn’t enough time for the bear to walk into that position), the woman’s shoes changing from black to silver, and the guard’s face changing at the elevator. They could easily go unnoticed by the audience. (Although I suspect women are more likely to notice the woman’s shoes changing color than men would.)
When Willis looks at the guard after the guard’s face changes, he appears to be looking suspiciously at him, but the motivation for the look is ambiguous because he could be questioning why the guard is not trying to stop him from escaping, or he could be questioning why the guy’s face changed. (The first face looks like it may be the same as the face of another character from the future.)
There are a lot of weird and unusual things that happen in this film that are not magical realism because they are part of the narrative and the characters of the story acknowledge that they're weird and unusual, like all of the animals running around in the city, or the crazy actions of Pitt’s character. Or time travel itself, which is unreal in this film, but is a main part of the narrative.