Twelve Monkeys

Science fiction that begins in 2035. A virus killed five billion people in 1996. The survivors live underground and the surface has been left to animals. Cole is a prisoner. He is sent to the surface to collect samples and is then given another assignment: go back and find the original form of the virus. The aim is not to stop it. The scientists say so plainly; the past cannot be changed, they only want a sample. Cole lands in the wrong year. In 1990 he is shut in a psychiatric hospital and nobody believes what he says. He meets two people there. A psychiatrist, and a restless patient who is the son of a wealthy scientist. From there the film moves back and forth. 2035 again, then 1996, a zoo, a cinema and an airport. What the narrative is interested in is not time travel but madness: Cole does not trust his own memory, and the film leaves whether he is right or ill open for a long time. There is a recurring dream from his childhood. A man is shot at an airport and a woman runs; the narrative returns to that image repeatedly. The ending is a loop. What could not be changed was clear from the start. The source is a French short film. That film was made almost entirely of photographs and the same airport idea comes from it. Brad Pitt was nominated for an Academy Award for the part. Bruce Willis, Madeleine Stowe, Brad Pitt and Christopher Plummer are in the cast. Terry Gilliam directed. Who it is for: anyone who wants tangled, dark science fiction. Who it is not for: anyone looking for clarity; the film confuses on purpose and its visual language is uneasy.