by Paul Costello
For the month of February, I have decided to offer a few weeks of monologues from actors who have never won an Oscar, despite nominations and/or general consensus that it should already have happened. Why?
Because everyone loves a good theme.
For the month of February, I have decided to offer a few weeks of monologues from actors who have never won an Oscar, despite nominations and/or general consensus that it should already have happened. Why?
Because everyone loves a good theme.
What can you say about Terry Gilliam the filmmaker? Well, he is certainly a very inventive and creatively distinct artist, making some of the oddest films that have swung between the mainstream and the nether realm of the art house. His films are almost uniformly cult favourites, like Brazil, Time Bandits and Fear and Loathing Las Vegas. Even his failures are themselves endlessly fascinating, like his aborted attempts to make a movie about Don Quixote chronicled in the excellent documentary Lost in La Mancha. Amongst his many features, one of his most successful and well-received is his 1995 sf flick 12 Monkeys.
Based on Chris Marker’s 162 short film La Jetée, 12 Monkeys follows a convicted criminal living in a post-apocalyptic 2035 Philadelphia, who is sent back in time to discover the source of the plague that wiped out almost every human being on earth. However, the film’s protagonist Cole (Bruce Willis) so often struggles with his own perception of his role, his superiors and his own sanity that he often legitimately thinks that his simply mad… and yet can’t help but continue on his apparently insane mission.
Based on Chris Marker’s 162 short film La Jetée, 12 Monkeys follows a convicted criminal living in a post-apocalyptic 2035 Philadelphia, who is sent back in time to discover the source of the plague that wiped out almost every human being on earth. However, the film’s protagonist Cole (Bruce Willis) so often struggles with his own perception of his role, his superiors and his own sanity that he often legitimately thinks that his simply mad… and yet can’t help but continue on his apparently insane mission.
This theme of madness and misinterpreted reality is spread throughout the film, but is given the chance to really wallow in itself when Cole is committed to hospital for the mentally ill. And there he meet Jeffrey Goines, a hyper-twitchy activist fighting the system and thrown in this place to stop him from spreading his “plague of madness”. Goines is a hell of a character in that he is everything and nothing in the film. He is the face of madness, and the ultimate distraction; a charismatic agitator, and a hopelessly agitated loon; a truth-saying renegade, and mouthy toy soldier; a rhetoric machine who seems to understand things better than even he knows, and it’s turned him into a seemingly schizophrenic wreck. (He’s also great for the purposes of a series looking at monologues because the guy is a near perpetual state of monologue, provided he finds people imbalanced enough to listen to him.)
For all of his damn good work over his career, occasionally hitting heights of genuine filmic icon, it might actually be the case that Brad Pitt has never topped his turn as Jeffrey Goines. The whole scene is wonderfully directed by Gilliam, from the utterly off kilter camerawork to the cartoon sound stings, but it is Pitt that is the anchor of it all. The dialogue is superb, but the man himself is a whirlwind of rapid-fire delivery and exaggerated tics. It’s such a brilliantly captured performance, from vocalisation to body language, that you almost feel exhausted just from having spent a few minutes with him. And, best of all, tell me he doesn’t make a messed up kind of sense.
Setting the scene: Cole has been sent back to 1996 Baltimore, but has actually arrived six years earlier than planned. After being arrested and evaluated by a doctor (who will later become very important), he is placed in a mental institution. Upon arriving on the ward, he is handed over to Jeffrey for a tour of the room. Jeffrey does so, in a manner that only he could…
For all of his damn good work over his career, occasionally hitting heights of genuine filmic icon, it might actually be the case that Brad Pitt has never topped his turn as Jeffrey Goines. The whole scene is wonderfully directed by Gilliam, from the utterly off kilter camerawork to the cartoon sound stings, but it is Pitt that is the anchor of it all. The dialogue is superb, but the man himself is a whirlwind of rapid-fire delivery and exaggerated tics. It’s such a brilliantly captured performance, from vocalisation to body language, that you almost feel exhausted just from having spent a few minutes with him. And, best of all, tell me he doesn’t make a messed up kind of sense.
Setting the scene: Cole has been sent back to 1996 Baltimore, but has actually arrived six years earlier than planned. After being arrested and evaluated by a doctor (who will later become very important), he is placed in a mental institution. Upon arriving on the ward, he is handed over to Jeffrey for a tour of the room. Jeffrey does so, in a manner that only he could…
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