A film that transcends the genre.

Rating: 8/10 (23 February 2001)

To call Terry Gilliam's 12 Monkeys a science fiction/fantasy film would be to call Stanley Kubrick's The Shining a horror film. I have seen 12 Monkeys many times now and what strikes me about it more than anything else is how Gilliam uses cinematic means to reveal a character desperately trying to remember something as he is hurled back and forth in time, creating a very disoriented concept/construct of reality and making it even more difficult to recall his childhood memory which is the crux of the problem he desperately seeks to solve. We are thrown straight into his hysteria and if we are to doubt his perception of reality we must doubt our own as they are one in the same, we are given no other option than to accept the character's reality. I find it absolutely amazing that as wild and fantastic as this movie is I have a hard time viewing it as implausible and that is because it is told in such a magnificent fashion that it makes every moment, especially the end seem not only plausible but inevitable. Not a frame is wasted. This film goes straight for your throat, it doesn't spend any time messing around. It is one of the few films that has yet to exhaust me. Gilliam does a great job (As he has in several other films.) of placing an object in the midst of an ocean of empty space. Like many great noir filmmakers he understands how to use emptiness not merely as negative space, but as the most important space, the only difference being instead of creating the effect through lighting Gilliam manages his success through composition and the contents or lack thereof that he places within the context. Though mention has been made of it this is one of the only times I have ever seen a director take full advantage of the empty space, and not by filling it but by allowing it to remain unoccupied by objects or subjects. The relationships are intriguing to say the least and with this film Gilliam has taken yet another step towards distinguishing himself as a truly important and unique filmmaker. This film is much more than a science fiction/fantasy film and is a perfect example of why some films should not be identified by genres at all.