I finally got around to watching the French sci-fi classic, the black and white short movie La Jetée (1962), which served as the basis for Terry Gilliam’s 12 Monkeys (1995).

By Emad Aysha
Here, a nuclear war happens, forcing what’s left of humanity to go underground, with a de facto police state and scientific autocracy developing. To dig themselves out of the gutter, they experiment with time travel to get resources to survive and rebuild themselves.

LESS IS MORE: The closing scene in 'La Jetée' (1962), with protagonist (Davos Hanich) willingly racing to his own inevitable future.

While only 27 minutes long, it’s a surprisingly full meal and leaves you with more to ponder on than Gilliam’s excellent movie. The story is also more ambitious, with the protagonist travelling both backwards in time and forward.

The reason the director Chris Marker can get away with it is the simplicity of the format of the film. It’s told through the perspective of one person and one person only, the time-traveller, a man haunted by a lovely image from his childhood – of a smiling woman at an airport’s jetty.

That image of peace and tranquillity is what kept him going through the dark years of the nuclear holocaust. Being black and white is another boon, as colours tax your mind, distracting your attention along multiple intellectual and emotional tracks.

The story, moreover, is told through still photos, and the pictures are positively haunting. You have silhouettes, weird contraptions that aren’t explained, faces half-secluded in the dark, and broken statues to juxtapose the miserable state of the future living.

The movie is pure genius, and while SF, you got the distinct impression it wasn’t really about the future at all, but about how the French have been driven underground and regimented with fear, during the Cold War, with technocratic elites running things from behind the scenes.

Hence, the fatalistic French are trying to squeeze out what little happiness they can from the few tranquil moments of peace they are living through, between WWII and impending WWIII. The whole philosophy of the movie seems to be this: to make the best of the time we have in this world.

The simple pleasures in life, like watching planes landing, for kids, lovely sunsets and sunrises, and a pretty, smiling face. Not to mention human companionship, with no pretences. People who feel they are fated for each other.

FACE IN FOCUS: Hélène Chatelain, the dream girl of La Jetée's hero. There's worse things worth dying for!

The casting is also great. The hero and his girl are very normal-looking people, but they have a serenity and charm that is captivating, and the woman, while plain, is ‘regal’ in her own way.

All of this, technically, was in Gilliam’s movie, except for going to the future and the man willingly running to his death. The airport sequence, the angelic face of a woman, the simple pleasures in life – lovely music, seeing the ocean, going to Florida, falling in love with someone you feel you’ve known your whole life, etc.

They just overcomplicated it with the mistaken time-travel sequences and the admittedly brilliant character of Jeffrey Goines, also known as Brad Pitt. The time-travel philosophy is also a bit unclear, since the ‘volunteer’ James Cole (Bruce Willis) believes time can’t be changed and yet his actions inadvertently led to the destruction of the world.

CAGED HEAT: An underground scene in '12 Monkeys' where anti-socials are kept in literal chicken cages. Volunteering is the only way to get a reduced sentence for violating the never-ending emergence laws. (Sounds eerily familiar.)

In La Jetée, the hero is contacted by people from the future who can save him, pulling his mind with them into the new recovered world. Still, he prefers instead to see his sweetheart one more time, even if it means risking death or living through the horrors of the war again.

He actually rejects the pacifistic philosophy of the future world. He’s much more proactive and determined than James Cole. He was way too much of a victim in this film, which was unnecessary since time paradoxes allow for freewill to make things inevitable.

I also think Terry Gilliam threw too much of himself into 12 Monkeys, as great as it is. There’s a lot of recycling, such as the blurred glass screens and the plastic see-through suits, as well as references to Time Bandits (1981).

There’s a lot of imagery borrowed from The Fisher King (1991), such as grail mythology. There’s Christian imagery with James Cole being ‘JC’ or Jesus Christ, with his death as a crucifixion and resurrection scene.

The very maternal, angelic, and timid beauty of Madeleine Stowe is clearly a reference to the Virgin Mary, one of the movie's stronger points. (With the blonde wig and trench coat, she resembles Ingrid Bergman.)

ANGEL ON THE BORDER: Madeline Stowe in a screenshot from 'Revenge' (1990), set in Mexico. Stowe in real life is part Latin. The southern warmth really shows.

Dr Kathryn Railly is the woman forced to be single in this modern, selfish world, with such warm eyes, sympathetic lips, an elfin nose and ears, and a husky voice. (Her cheekbones and pasty white skin exaggerate the warm features and colours).

But the character pursuing James and calling him ‘Bob’ all the time overcomplicated things. Not to mention Jeffrey Goines, again, and his band of environmentalist nitwits, the 12 Monkeys. (I presume the bad guy virologist, played by David Morse, having red hair, is meant to make him look like the devil).

The anti-commercial philosophy of Gilliam’s movie, and the truth relativism of post-modernism, is all great. Still, it feels a bit like a sideshow when you watch the blunt modernist certainty of La Jetée.

Still, it’s good to see how much survived from La Jetée into this film, such as the graffiti on the walls and the stuffed animals. (The French accordion music felt a little out of place, though.)

As for the title '12 Monkeys,' I assume this is a Biblical reference – the 12 Disciples of Christ, and so the Apocalypse, with science as the new God.

Hence, Christopher Plummer’s character is portrayed as a southern aristocrat. The scientist in La Jetée is compared to Dr Frankenstein. (Check out the latest Mike Benz revelations on Covid being deliberately harvested by US government scientists in line with older programmes targeting Cuba with germs).

SCIENCE IN SERVICE: Chris Plummer and David Morse as the aforementioned virologists, working for the betterment of mankind or their pocketbooks?

According to my Sudanese friend, Mr El-Mubarak Fadl, who speaks French, La Jetée also means something like 'magic'. Its legacy lives on. Just look at the photo of Sarah Conner that was so important to Kyle Reese in The Terminator (1984).

A ‘memory’ of better times that gives you hope for the future.

God help us all.