(1) For a long time, the American director Terry Gilliam has been my favorite living film artist. Since his debut, Gilliam has never won a major award at any major film festival; he has not only drifted outside the mainstream of Hollywood, but also has not entered the eyes of European critics. However, there are countless fans all over the world who love him. The fans have built a palace for him on the Internet "The Terry Gilliam Fanzine". The detailed content is the only one I have seen so far; the high-quality DVD publisher Criterion has released his The two films "Brazil" and "Time Bandit", among the contemporary directors, there are very few morning stars who enjoy this honor. Even Abbas, David Cornenborg, and Martin Scorsese have only one work selected. Among them, "Brazil" received a special courtesy for an unprecedented time. Three DVD discs with rich content were carefully produced by Criterion, which won the DVD publishing award of that year.
My personal encounter with Gilliam took place in 1997. This disc named "Twelve Monkeys" has been permanently in my CD bag ever since. In 4 years, I reviewed this film no less than ten times, and I tirelessly recommend it to all my fellow movie lovers. "Twelve Monkeys" is no longer a movie to me, but a gateway to what Popper calls World 3. For example, there are three main sources of my enthusiasm for postmodern theory today, which are "Twelve Monkeys", Saussure and may31. This extremely complex, ambiguous but touching movie text is an uncompromising miracle. At the time when Gilliam’s new film "The Man Who Killed Don Quixote" was released, I wrote these words to draw an end to the past four years, but I don’t even know.
(2)"The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all your Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it."
----Poem from "12 monkeys" On the
surface, <> is about time travel, let’s treat it as a science fiction film about time travel for the time being Look. James Cole will return to the present from the future. The purpose is to collect samples of the virus that destroyed most of human beings 50 years ago and confirm where the virus began to spread. It should be noted that Cole did not come back to save humans. Hollywood hero: He can only observe history, but cannot change history. This is the theoretical basis of the film, and it is also different from previous films of similar themes. The poster of the film clearly reads: The future is history. For 1996 For the people, the destruction of mankind is still the future; but for Cole from the future, this is already history, and history cannot be changed. It is in this sense that the "future" in 1995 is Cole "History", the so-called "The future is history" means this. Cole originally understood this truth. In the mental hospital, he didn't tell the doctors plainly:
Save you? How can I save you? It already HAPPENED !
However, at the end of the film, when he discovers the true culprit of the virus spreading, he forgets that history cannot be changed; if he can really kill the virus spreader, wouldn't it change history? Therefore, he is destined not to be a hero to save mankind, because mankind has been destroyed and cannot be saved. Cole wanted to change history, but unknowingly proceeded along the path of destiny set for him by history-and his death was actually part of this history. Theseus in Greek mythology was judged by the oracle to kill his father. His father fled to a remote island in fear, but unexpectedly, while watching the local competition, he was thrown to death by a discus thrown by Theseus who happened to be competing. . King Oedipus left his hometown because of the oracle of killing his father and marrying his mother since he was a child, and eventually returned to his homeland under the lead of fate, and fulfilled the oracle without knowing it. The death of Cole is full of ancient Greek tragedy: whether the hero in the tragedy is active (such as Cole) or passive (such as the father of Theseus), or unconscious (such as Oedipus), the wheel of fortune They will be crushed to pieces as always.
Coincidentally, Kasandra, a female prophet in Greek mythology, was mentioned in the film through the mouth of Dr. Leli. She can predict the future of pink in the red small words, but cannot change the future, because people put her prediction pink in the red small words. Ignore it as crazy. Cole is really a combination of Cassandra and Oedipus. He can predict the future in pink, but he is regarded as a lunatic like Cassandra; he wants to change the future, but like Oedipus. Become a doll of destiny. For Cole, "history" is the fate in Greek mythology, which cannot be broken away. History is history, written in black and white; and as the poet at the beginning of the film said, "Nor all your Piety or Wit Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line, Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it." Whether it was piety or wisdom, or Reilly's sad tears, none of this could be changed. Because of this, <> is a real tragedy, and <> is just a shallow fairy tale. In <>, the prototype of the supercomputer is destroyed by robots from the future, and the future is completely changed. So what will happen to that dark and skyless future? Is the sun shining in an instant, or the whole smoke disappears?
Director Terry Gilliam’s mythological complex is not unrelated to his personal experience. In his early years, he was the animation director of the sensational comedy series Monty Python, and Monty Python’s masterpiece is deconstructed by modern consciousness. Mythological stories. For example, "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" ridiculed the myth of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, and "Monty Python's Life of Brian" parodyed the story of Jesus in the Bible. As a result, it was resisted by religious organizations in the UK. It should be controlled and banned. As far as Gilliam is concerned, his famous film "Time Bandits" after he became a director and "The Adventures of Baron Munchausen" are pure mythological themes, and in the "Fish King" one, I have already integrated mythology into the plot without trace, and explored the isomorphism between mythology and real life. "Twelve Monkeys" goes a step further than the above films. The so-called "no word" is so romantic: although the whole film is only borrowed from buds Li's mouth mentioned Cassandra once, other than that, it seems to have nothing to do with Greek mythology, but no matter the plot, the characters or the atmosphere are like a classic Greek tragedy, it is like a masterpiece by Sophocles. The first time I watched this film, I didn’t notice it, but in the second and third time, when I saw the key points, I always thought of "Oedipus King" and "Medea". Looking at contemporary films, I'm afraid Only Angelopoulos' "The Gaze of Ulysses" can be viewed on the same level. Gilliam can use the most modern time travel to express the most classical "tragic" aesthetic realm, and people can't help but admire.
However, the mystery of time travel does not stop there. "The future is history" can be understood in another way. If we arbitrarily intercept a cross-section of time before Cole was killed, then, for Cole at this time, is the event of his killing the future or history? The answer is that it is both the future and the history! On the one hand, Cole has not been killed at this time, so this is undoubtedly his future; on the other hand, he witnessed this incident when he was 6 years old, and what happened at the age of 6 should be history. Since our own future is history, we cannot help but wonder whether there is so-called free will? This is probably also a paradox that time travel has to face: Is it true that all time travellers who participate in time travel are puppets who have lost their free will? So when Cole said desperately: "I want the future to be unkown", I could almost smell the sorrow and sorrow.
Of course, these question films did not give satisfactory answers; in fact, it only asked questions and refused to answer any questions at all. As we will talk about, the seemingly complicated time travel is only the top of the iceberg, and everything under the sea will appear one by one with repeated viewing of the film.
(3)What genealogy really does is to entertain the claims to attention of local, discontinuous, disqualified, illegitimate knowledges against the claims of a unitary body of theory which would filter, hierarchize and order them in the name of some true knowledge and some arbitrary idea of what constitutes a science and its objects.
----Michel Foucault, "Two Lectures"
If "The Twelve Monkeys" is only the sentimentality of personal destiny, it is undoubtedly a beautiful and moving movie,
but it must not make me worship so crazy. Compared with previous films of similar themes, such as the "Terminator" series and the "Back to the Future" series, the director of "Twelve Monkeys" undoubtedly has a sharper philosophical sense.
Structuralists since Saussure tend to emphasize "synchronical" and light "diachronical". For them, any system is a function of time. Only when time is nailed can they be discussed with confidence The internal structure of the system and the meaning produced by the "difference". Once the variable of time is let go, the whole system will be messed up. In terminology, it is the so-called "anachrony", the timing is reversed. In the view of the structuralists, the so-called "meaning" and "truth" are only values emitted by a system located in a certain time section. Because of this, Saussure’s structuralist linguistics fundamentally shakes the Enlightenment concept of believing in scientific truth and social progress. The post-structuralist Derrida deconstructed the meaning from the inside of the system along Saussure's thinking; but if we change our thinking and use anachrony to collage the system elements at different times, we can also achieve the purpose of deconstruction. Time travel is such a sharp blade that can cut through the veil of truth. It makes us realize that there is no eternal truth. Once it is separated from the current social system, many "truths" will appear ridiculous. In fact, the selling point of the Monty Python series of comedies lies in this: let a group of modern people wear ancient costumes to interpret ancient stories, and no matter how solemn and sacred words are disappeared in the London swearing of gagging and mixing. . The director of "Twelve Monkeys" is obviously aware of the deconstructive effect of the time dimension on truth. Hear what Jeffrey played by Brad Pitt:
"Take germs for example. In the 18th century there was no such thing! Nobodyd ever imagined such a thing - no sane person anyway."
Is the director implying that bacteria, or that objective truth does not exist? not that simple. On the one hand, Jeffrey only pointed out that for people in the 18th century, bacteria did not exist; for us people in the 20th century, there is no doubt that bacteria do exist. So who has mastered the truth? We have mastered our truth, they have mastered their truth, because there is no truth out of the times. As Foucault said, what we can grasp is only current, loose, and non-universal knowledge. On the other hand, we should notice that Jeffrey appeared in the film as a lunatic. How credible is his words? This is the cunning of the director. But if we go further, we will find that the concept of "crazy" has also been ruthlessly deconstructed in the film (see the next section).
Speaking of this, I have to mention Foucault’s doctoral dissertation supervisor, the science historian Canguilhem, whose pioneering ideas have had a great influence on Foucault. From the perspective of structuralism, Gunquilem believes that the boundary between "true" and "false" in the history of science is constantly changing because people always write history from the current scientific understanding. Once the current knowledge changes, the history of science has to be rewritten. In other words, "all history is contemporary history"; if history is understood in the framework of history itself, then did bacteria ever exist in the 18th century? A hundred years ago, science that seemed as solid as a rock The truth now seems to be full of flaws; for the same reason, if we look at the current scientific knowledge from a hundred years from now, wouldn't it be full of flaws? Although we can only look back from the present, fortunately, there are fantasy wings that take us off the ground, allowing us to look down on all kinds of landforms that we cannot see because we are "only in this mountain". Time travel is undoubtedly the wings of this pair of Daedalus, enabling people to be liberated through fantasy.
Gaston Bachelard, a scientific philosopher with a deep artistic temperament, once distinguished between pure fantasy and artistic representation derived from life experience. The detached charm of fantasy is incomparable to ordinary copying of reality. Like the hot air balloons that appear repeatedly in Tarkovsky's "Andrei Rublev" and "Mirror", art with a fantasy color is the gospel of all those who are bound by gravity. In an instant of flight, we temporarily lost the gravity of history, the gravity of meaning, and the gravity of morality, and we realized the existence of "gravity" for the first time. Jean Baudrillard further pointed out in "The Illusion of Doomsday" that if the speed of flight exceeds the speed of the first universe, we will get rid of the shackles of gravity and enter space and enter the real nothingness. In Baudrillard’s view, the reality we live in has provided this dangerous acceleration, and I would rather believe that this is only his wishful thinking; otherwise, how to explain the contemporary popularity of science fiction literature as the ultimate fantasy? We still have a desire for fantasy enough to prove that "region" and "map" have not yet merged into one.
Fantasy literature is the art of our time. I don't want to use the generic term science fiction, because in my opinion, it is an absurd idea in itself to force a hot air balloon to be tied to the line of science. Whether it’s the time travel in "Twelve Monkeys", the psychic history in "The Base", or the drugs that can change time and space in "Make Me Cry, The Police Just Washed Last Night", they provide It is not a foresight of science and technology, but rather a dimension of reflection on reality. It is meaningless to discuss its technical feasibility.
(4)You know what "crazy" is? "crazy" is "majority rules".
---- Jeffrey Mason, in "Twelve Monkeys"
Inspired by Gunquilem's "Normal State and Sickness", Foucault wrote "Madness and Civilization". In Foucault's view, there is no eternal boundary between reason and madness; on the contrary, this boundary shifts indefinitely with the changes of the times. Before 1600, there were no psychiatric hospitals in Europe, and lunatics wandered freely on the earth. At that time, they were the lepers who were excluded as the "other" in society. The famous painting "The Ship of Fools" by the Dutch painter Hieronymous Bosch is the best portrayal of it. It’s a coincidence. Although Terry Gilliam, the director of "Twelve Monkeys", never admitted to reading Foucault’s work, he mentioned in an interview that his film was deeply influenced by Bosch and Bosch in terms of composition. Inspired by Peter Breugel the Elder and Rene Magritte. We can only imagine by speculation how much the weird and obsessive madman images in Bosch's paintings have had an impact on Gilliam, but it is an indisputable fact that "crazy" as a theme repeatedly appears in his films. From "Brazil" to "Fisher King" to "Twelve Monkeys", Gilliam's depiction of madness has become more and more penetrating, and "Twelve Monkeys" can almost be used as "Madness and Civilization" and The footnote to "Discipline and Punishment" is gone.
Why would James Cole from the future be imprisoned in a mental hospital? First, he did not have any documents to prove his identity; second, he kept saying that the world would be destroyed in 1996. In other words, Cole's "symptoms" are not physiological, but lie in their conflict with the order of reality. The mental hospital is a pillar to maintain social rationalization (justification/rationalization), and is the home of all others who are far from the core of social rationality. "Mental patients" are often the witches and Cassandra in the new era. Think of Van Gogh, Nietzsche, Holderlin, Kleist, Haizi, and even Joan... And as Dr. Reilly said in the film :
"And what WE believe is whats accepted as "truth" now, isnt it, Owen? Psychiatry - its the latest religion. And were the priests - we decide whats right and whats wrong --we decide whos crazy and who isnt. "
Perhaps more ironic than "The Twelve Monkeys" is the Argentine fantasy film "The Man Facing the Southwest": A wise alien came to the earth and was imprisoned in a mental hospital! As a science, psychiatry tries to rationalize all visions and bring them into the realm of rationality, so there is what Reilly calls the "Cassandra Complex" (Cassandra Complex). While Reilly sums up Cole’s "symptoms" in a serious manner, and puts a witty label on it (obviously a satire on Freud’s Oedepus Compus and Electra Complex – Electra Complex ), as an individual, Cole has been swallowed up by the gray scientific discourse like an insect of a certain class and order.
Don't think that what we see is just a movie. The movie is just a silver mirror, and the person in the mirror may be ourselves. Gilliam is called Kafka and Orwell on the screen by many people because of "Brazil". However, what does the beginning of "Brazil" say? "Somewhere in the 20th century." He is not shooting the future, but us. The era of Chu is an alternate world with the imprint of our era. "Brazil" is true, "Twelve Monkeys" is also true. If you don’t believe me, open google and enter the keyword "mental hospital", a series of words such as "Fa X gongfu clothing, one of his sons is imprisoned in a mental hospital", "a judge in China is imprisoned in a mental hospital", "the mental hospital becomes forced for two days The characters "It all distinguishes and harm tools" came out, shockingly. The most interesting is an article called "Mental Hospital Random Thoughts". The author is an intern medical student. His biggest impression is that "there is no objective standard for the diagnosis of mental illness." It is really black humor. To the extreme.
But if this is our interpretation of the film, it will undoubtedly be caught by the director's trap. "Twelve Monkeys" is the most thorough anti-ideological film. The so-called ideology, in short, is a dichotomy, such as persecution for two days, it distinguishes persecution/anti-persecution, it distinguishes persecution for two days, madness/reason, future/present, and so on. "The Twelve Monkeys" is more like the unpredictable painting by the neo-historicist Greenfield. It is sometimes a polite portrait of a nobleman, sometimes it is a gloomy skull portrait. The difference depends only on the difference. Perspective.
Jeffrey, played by Brad Pitt, is one of the most mysterious characters in the film. He was so charismatic that he later copied his performance in "Twelve Monkeys" almost completely in "Fighting Club". Jeffrey’s image rejects all ideological classifications: who can tell whether he is a thinker or an actor, a lunatic or a prophet? He is more like a lunatic in the classical era-as Foucault said, the lunatics at that time not only did not aphasia, but were regarded by people as a symbol of truth and wisdom. They are fearless critics of the political system, they are the madmen of "Fengge Laughing at Confucius", and they are the spiritual successors of Diogenes. Unfortunately, Jeffrey, who was born at the end of the twentieth century, could only deliver his speech in a mental hospital, even though he was a critical spirit, an animal protectionist, opposed to popular culture and essentialism.
(5)"It's a condition of'mental divergence'. I find myself on another planet, Ogo...But though it's a totally convincing reality in every way, I can feel, breathe, hear... nevertheless, Ogo is actually a construct of my psyche. I am mentally divergent in that I am escaping certain unnamed realities that plague my life here. Are you also divergent, friend?"
----TJ Washington, in "Twelve Monkeys" Is
James Cole a lunatic? This question is probably more difficult to answer than "Is Jeffrey a lunatic?" Although we take it for granted that he is a normal person from the future, don't forget that all the evidence comes from the movie text we are watching from Cole's perspective. Is it possible that what Dr. Reilly said is true, there is so-called "Cassandra syndrome", and what time travel, the destruction of the world only exists in the mind of a madman? If so, everything we see from beginning to end is actually just a Berkeley doctrine of "the end of the world" (see "Why "The End of the World and Cold Wonderland is a Science Fiction"). In fact, this kind of possibility not only exists, but the director still hints everywhere that all of Cole's experiences in the "future world" are a distorted reflection of "reality" in his mind. I have found no less than ten such parallel relationships between "fantasy" and "reality" in the film. If they are all coincidences, I would underestimate the director's intentions: in the
future,
Cole saw one when he was collecting specimens on the ground. The bear saw a giant mural of a bear at the airport
. Cole also saw a lion when he went to the airport and saw a statue of a lion.
Send Cole back to the glowing time machine in the past. A glowing CAT machine
in the psychiatric hospital to the ground to collect specimens. The disinfection and bathing
in the psychiatric hospital. The “strait-jacket” similar to the raincoat worn by you was hurt and
the spider specimens collected on the ground. The spider swallowed in the mental hospital
entered on the ground and entered the department store of an abandoned church airport. In fact, it is the
"future" of the church . Scientists in power psychiatric hospitals censor Cole’s doctors. They are exactly the same in number and gender ratio as the former
. Radio in underground prisons soliciting “volunteers”. Airports soliciting “volunteers” in
underground prisons. Jailers in mental hospitals. The doorman, who is the same person as the former (plays)
the hoarse voice heard in the underground prison, the hoarse voice heard on the streets of Philadelphia (a hobo) is
the most powerful word about time travel/end of the world that runs through the film The doubt appeared at the end of the film: we found that the scene that appeared repeatedly in Cole’s dream became a reality (because according to the discourse of time travel, the young Cole was there and witnessed the whole scene), but there is a little key mistake". The person carrying the box in the dream had always been Jeffrey, but in reality, it was a stranger! If you consider the corresponding relationships listed above that are by no means coincidence, the "authenticity" of the entire story becomes a problem. However, even if we are "the mentally divergent" (see the introduction of this section), can we really construct a "reality" completely separated from the "objective world" (if there is a so-called objective world) like a novel?
Hilary Putnam's "brain in a tank" has now become the new favorite of fantasy novels/movies. French laundry detergent in the red country fantasy movie "The City of Lost Children" (The City of Lost Children) has reproduced a living "brain in a tank" on the screen long before "The Matrix." As for the fantasy movies with the theme of "virtual reality", there are more than anything else. However, most of the "virtual reality" can only be realized by technical means, such as the game consoles in "Game of Senses" (eXistenZ), "The Matrix" and "Ten The computer network in "Three Floors", the "spiritual reader" in "Strange Days", the TV signal in "Videodrome", and even the "Dark City" (Dark City). ) Super powers of aliens inside. However, when you look closely, the "virtual reality" in the above-mentioned film is just a "copy" of reality, and only the "reality" we observe through Cole's eye in "Twelve Monkeys" is the meaning of Baudrillard. "Simulacra" on the screen. Although the former is closer to Baudrillard’s technical determinism, the latter truly enables the audience to experience the so-called “hyperreality” from the perspective of ontology. "Duplicate" is only an imitation of the real thing. When we talk about "copy", we have assumed the existence of the real thing; and "simulacra" is a simulation of nonbeings without the original and no real thing, which smooths out the truth. /Pseudo-dual opposite plane exists. Of course, when talking about "copy", "simulacra", and "super real", I have already left Baudrillard's context. In "Twelve Monkeys", there are two possible "realities": one is that Cole returns to the present through time travel from the future; the other is that the so-called time travel end of the world only exists in Cole's mind. These two mutually inclusive and contradictory "realities" are a kind of "parallel" relationship in the film, that is, there is no "copy" of who is who, which is completely opposite to the reality in The Matrix/ Virtual reality is in sharp contrast.
Regarding truth, postmodern theorists have said too much. Perhaps only Richard Rorty's phrase "now is true" is the most shocking. In "Twelve Monkeys", Cole finally could not tell which of the two "real" is really true, but he would rather believe that it is the latter (that is, he is a lunatic), because then the world will not If it will be destroyed, he can breathe clean air freely. Perhaps in the postmodern nightmare, pragmatism is our last straw. The ending of "Brazil" is like this: the protagonist and his beloved MM drove a truck to escape from the "castle"-like city to the beautiful countryside with fresh air. Suddenly, the camera jumped back to the empty torture room: It turned out that the protagonist had an illusion for the entire twenty minutes. In fact, he became an idiot after being subjected to brain surgery by the interrogator, and his MM was killed by the police who had just washed the clothes last night when they were fucked. Gilliam made a meaningful comment on this: "I think this is a happy ending." In the final analysis, are you willing to choose the virtual reality in Matrix or the barren and dark real world?
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