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As I write this addendum to the below essay, the world has not yet collapsed.
How can I save you?
says the protagonist, Bruce Williss James Cole, early on in the 1995 Terry Gilliam film.
I cant save you.
By the time he appears before the shrinks, weve already seen Coles home time.
Throughout the story, we know sometimes even better than he does the worldwide doom that awaits.
He couldnt save anyone.
Ive been thinking about12 Monkeysa lot lately.
The most obvious threat is not a virus, but rather our degradation of the biosphere.
So what does one do when the end is foreordained?
For the uninitiated, three points must be made before going further.
People speak about the collapse of civilization with startling regularity.
More and more of us are united by a feeling like anything good is living on borrowed time.
While in the 90s, we see Cole gradually make a transition.
He laughs as tears begin to stream down his cheeks.
I love the music of the 20th century!
I love this air!
Love to breathe this air!
He sucks oxygen in deeply and sticks his head out the window, cracking up.
Its a beautiful moment, one Ive thought of often in recent days.
When I stop going there, I will be well.
We are unwell if we live permanently in joy.
But its worthwhile to taste what you might, here and there.
And what of hope?
Here we find a mix of duty and mild, benevolent insanity.
On the surface,12 Monkeysprovides us almost solely with dread, and its comforts are profoundly cold.
Gilliam and his team conjure up an unforgettably bleak vision of Coles home era, where the narrative begins.
In the 90s, we get premonitions of disaster, and not just from Cole.
Its a great idea!
In this context, isnt it obvious that chicken little represents thesanevision?
And that homo sapienss motto, Lets go shopping, is the cry of the true lunatic?
In an admirably bold leap of grimness, the movie never really offers up a counterargument to these notions.
There is no point at which someone triumphantly defends humanity and says that love will surely conquer all.
Its too late, after all.
And yet, despite all this, the movie ends on a note of extremely cautious optimism.
She tells him shes in insurance.
One might read this as her being sent to prevent the further spread of the disease.
Given everything weve already seen, this is a misreading.
She wouldnt have pinpointed the proper moment without Coles efforts.
They werent for naught.
But we cannot accept that the catastrophe is the end of the story.
There will be some kind of future, however difficult it may be to live in.
Gilliams film doesnt provide us with that relief.
It guarantees nothing pleasant.
This is not the past.
This is not the future.
This is right now.
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