Director: Chris Marker | Release: 1962 | Genre: Sci-Fi
This brings us to the French short film that inspired Twelve Monkeys: La Jeteé. Made in 1962 and directed by Chris Marker it tells the story of another man, this time without a name, living below the surface of a hopelessly hostile world, destroyed by World War Three (a familiar fear of annihilation from that time, also shown, for pitch black laughs, in Dr Strangelove). He is selected, by an unnamed superior, and told that there is hope for the future, but it lies not in space but in time. He is sent back in time to bring back resources,
While 12 Monkeys wasn’t exactly sunshine and rainbows this film takes the nightmarish bleakness and abstract surrealism even further: there are no moving images, only still pictures, nor even a dash of colour, everything is shown in black and white, at one point a man’s face under a light bore an uncanny resemblance to a skull. Even the voices are grim and melancholy. There is no music, just a voice.
All these films have in common a darkness, sometimes literal and sometimes metaphorical, and all deal with the mind, including the outer reaches of sanity. All use music and unusual photography, of different sorts, to create a sense of confusion.
Director: Terry Gilliam | Release: 1995 | Genre: Sci-Fi
This is not a cheery film, but what can one expect from the director of Brazil? Made in 1995 it is set after a plague has wiped out most of all life on earth and our hero, James Cole is sent from the future to gather samples so scientists can cure the plague and mankind can reclaim the surface of earth, and no longer live underground.
Twelve Monkeys deals with the theme of fate but unlike Back to the Future and the Terminator films (at least the first two) the hero fails to prevent the outbreak, and dies, the audience has to settle for a sample successfully being retrieved by Cole before he dies and being used to make the cure for the disease, allowing mankind in the future to repopulate the earth.
The film also deals with theme of mental illness and delusions, with Cole initially trying to convince the people around him that he can save the world from a deadly pathogen and that time is running out but eventually comes to question his own sanity and perception of reality.
Like Brazil this film has a dark, gothic aesthetic with buildings and scenery in different time periods, such as the underground shelters, the mental asylum which he is put in when he goes back in time. The camera angles convey the sense of an unhealthy mind. The asylum’s filthy aspect reflects the discomfort of Cole.
The music was ominous, adding to the atmosphere. It is subtle, using the accordion, an instrument usually associated with lightness rather than danger.
The lead actor, Bruce Willis, successfully conveys the feeling of desperation as he fails to complete his mission, and his frustration that people from the past fail to understand the importance of his mission. Willis, an action star, is well cast as a man who fails in one of his objectives.
It was particularly appropriate to watch this film during the Coronavirus outbreak.
Director: Christopher Nolan | Release: 2010 | Genre: Sci-Fi Action.
WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD.
The protagonist, Dominic Cobb is a thief with the special, though not unique ability, to extract information from people’s brains while they are asleep. He meets with a man named Saito, claiming to have the ability to extract information from the mind and offers to protect his, even during sleep from thieves who steal people’s dreams. Cobb encounters a woman, Mal, who helps him get to Saito’s safe in his mind but she ends up siding with Saito. They take Cobb’s colleague as hostage.
Cobb and his partners wake and go their separate ways, with Cobb going on the run from his current employers. Saito catches up with Cobb and makes the extractor an offer: he’ll arrange to wipe Cobb’s criminal record (which would allow him to go home) if Cobb can manage to perform an inception on one of Saito’s rivals. Whereas extraction involves stealing ideas or information already in somebody’s head, inception involves the insertion of an idea into someone’s head in a way which convinces the target that they independently conceived the idea. Cobb accepts Saito’s proposal, even though he knows it has a catch: nobody has ever pulled off a successful inception, as the targets always realise that they didn’t come up with the inserted idea.
I enjoyed scene with the elevator where Cobb goes through memorises of his wife, which I found a creative way to move though non physical locations. The use of nature was beautiful; rain in one dream and snow in another, which felt added some environmental diversity to dreams
I especially like tow fight scenes in dreams, one where a hero fought another man in a hallway without gravity and another where Saito escapes a man in a stairway then runs down it but we see this from above and Saito somehow ends up behind the man and the stairway now has an edge that Saito and pushes the man off, it is both cleverly filmed and clever of the character. It is also clever because a similar effect was shown earlier when the architect was walking up some stairs with another character, which rewards the viewers to remember that scene.
Some of the dialogue describing ideas and their resilient nature I found clever, also the concept of stealing ideas and dreams within dreams. Dreams can appear real in the film not just because there are not surreal colours, flashing lights or whispering voices, but other people are present and are explained to be creations and extensions of their mind, which I found interesting.
I also enjoyed the twist with Mal being a projection created by Cobb of his dead wife, giving Mal and Cobb a sinister but intricate dynamic. In addition, I thought the way in which the dreams and reality were enmeshed in certain scenes were very well executed. For example, the dream life Cobb was living with his wife went faster than reality, which was mentally, 50 years.
The Soundtrack, composed by the talented Hans Zimmer, was ominous and dramatic, thus fitting with the film. Finally, the ending left the audience reeling if as we are left to decide if Cobb was truly reunited with his family or merely dreaming about them. Although, I can imagine it may be frustrating for some viewers, but it worked well with me.
Tomás 