La Jetee

viewed January 29, 2000 on video

For full information about this film, click here

Just how good is La Jetee?  Is it really better than 12 Monkeys, its latter-day, Hollywood adaptation?  It is far simpler yet makes a greater visual impact with its technique, a sequence of black and white stills guided by voiceover.  The effects of the visuals are at once direct and distant.  A silent melancholy pervades the film like a mute shadowplay.  As a result, it is a science fiction that draws more attention to its ideas than its special effects.

The story isn't as logically cohesive as 12 Monkeys -- and the comparison calls to attention the '90s compulsion to connect everything together.  It isn't explained clearly whether the trip to the past, and especially the future, is real or just imaginary, but in that regard it has a more abstract, mythic quality than the more concretely functional narrative of 12 Monkeys.  This movie is looser in its narrative buildup but no less rapturous, with the simplicity of a bedtime story and the flow of a dream.  But this isn't to say that La Jetee clearly triumphs over its successor.  The ending is far sadder and final than 12 Monkeys, and, believe it or not, doesn't linger in the mind as long as the final shot of Bruce Willis watching himself die.  The two films are after different purposes, and accomplish their respective objectives while revealing their respective limitations. Call it a draw.

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