Source Code (USA, 2011)
Directed by Duncan Jones
Starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Michelle Monaghan, Vera Farmiga, Jeffrey Wright

Low-budget filmmaking has one big drawback: you become so used to creating so much with so little, that when someone offers you a huge pile of money, you panic and lose all your marbles. So many promising, talented filmmakers, who earned critical acclaim through their Spartan early efforts, have come a cropper the second the budget started to creep up. It takes a truly great filmmaker to hold his or her nerve when Hollywood beckons - and one such filmmaker is Duncan Jones.Consider the evidence. Source Code, Jones' second feature film, has a budget of $32m - just over six times the budget of Moon two years ago (without adjusting for inflation). Obviously with more money involved and access to the latest special effects, you would expect a more mainstream effort. But Source Code is every bit as gripping, intelligent and distinctive as his debut - and that should warm the cockles of anybody's heart.Source Code could be pithily described as Moon's mainstream cousin, since the two films have a number of similarities in terms of subject and execution. Quite apart from both having their roots firmly in the smart end of science fiction, they both have prominent elements of conspiracy, rooted around individuals being unknowingly exploited by their governments.

More importantly, both Moon and Source Code manages to address complex abstract issue of morality, truth, duty and reality while remaining intimate and human. In a genre which is often characterised as being cold and distant, Jones gives us a series of believable, well-rounded and intelligent characters which seem compelling even if we know what we are seeing is fixed and pre-determined. We enjoy their company as our brains race around, frantically looking for the answers to the various riddles the film offers us.Just as Moon looked back to the likes of Solaris, Soylent Green and Silent Running, so Source Code refers back to a number of previous works within science fiction. Apart from its superficial resemblance to Groundhog Day and Déja Vu, the film owes a large debt to Terry Gilliam's Twelve Monkeys. Both Cole and Colter Stevens are characters who are sent to the past (in a sense) to prevent a future disaster - and both eventually rebel against their mission and choose to remain in the doomed reality.There are also fleeting comparisons with The Jacket and Jacob's Ladder, which deal with the idea of a mentally ill soldier wrestling with demons which may be the product of his imagination. But Source Code departs from this sub-genre by focussing less on the nature of the fantasy and more on the ethics behind the source code itself. It is less about what happens during those eight minutes, as what is causing those eight minutes to occur and for what purpose.The conspiracy elements in Source Code address strong ethical issues while tapping into public anxiety and suspicion over Western involvement in the Middle East. Central to this is the idea that soldiers' semi-functional brain matter could be used in government operations after their death, a practice sanctioned by military courts but over which the soldiers themselves would have no say. The film addresses the idea of soldiers being drilled to obey even in death, taking the deconstruction of 'grunts' from Full Metal Jacket and bringing it into the 21st century.

As with Moon, Source Code explores the idea of manipulating human lives for political gain. The difference is that this manipulation is now occurring on both sides, with both the bomber and the US government going to extremes to achieve their respective goals. When Stevens finds and confronts the bomber, he says that "we have a chance to rebuild from the rubble - but you need rubble to start with". This is echoed in Stevens' own predicament: in order for the source code to work as a weapon against terrorism, it needs a small number of mentally special cases which have come about through the war on terror.Source Code is also about the fragmentation of identity, and particularly the role of the mind in creating or assigning identity. On a basic level, the film explores what it would be like to be somebody else for a short period of time. During his eight-minute periods as Sean Fentriss, Stevens re-evaluates the world around him and finds a way to come to terms with who he is as he discovers what really happened in Afghanistan. Towards the end of the film there is a heart-breaking sequence of Stevens (as Fentriss) calling his real-life father and apologising on his own behalf.But this exploration of identity is not confined to the events within the train. As we spend more time inside the source code, the film raises the question of whether identity is determined by the mind or self, or whether it is the product of how others perceive you. In his mind, Colter Stevens knows he is an ex-soldier, but the more time he spends in the source code, the more the two personalities begin to intersect until we don't entirely know where Stevens ends and Fentriss begins.This line of questioning is brought to a chilling conclusion by the final revelations about Stevens' mental state. But even before we get there, Source Code does a great job of throwing us off with the various twists. Ben Ripley's script plants subtle little doubts about the safety of the source code - like Stevens commenting on hydraulic fluid leaking out, or how cold the chamber is becoming. As its emerges that what he is seeing is largely projection, we are thrown into a maelstrom of doubts about what is real, leading us to cling to the character as he stumbles blindly through the darkness.Source Code is also technically accomplished, both in its shooting style and its approach to the time loop storyline. Going back to the same eight minutes over and over could quickly become tedious, but Jones never lets that happen, using a variety of creative decisions to keep us interested. The first time around, everything is played straight for tension, so that the bombing comes as a complete surprise. But gradually more comedy is introduced to defuse the tension, such as Stevens' ribbing with the comedian or predicting what Michelle Monaghan is going to say. By the time he is hunting for the bomber, Jones scrolls through the time rapidly until it becomes necessary to slow down and take in a twist.The only flaw with Source Code is its ending. As with the so-called 'happy' ending in Brazil, you can understand the reasons for doing it, and it adds up to some extent mechanically - for instance, the recurring images of the mirror sculpture being finally explained. But you still come away feeling like the film would have been more emotionally and intellectually satisfying had it ended in the freeze-frame on the train. And that's not to mention the alternate time line, which shows source code yet to be used - again, it works, but it isn't necessary.Despite its ending, Source Code is a really great sci-fi thriller and one of the best films of 2011 so far. Jones demonstrates his intelligence and visual flare as a director, wringing every last drop of emotion and nuance out of what could be a preposterous premise. Jake Gyllenhaal gives his best performance since Donnie Darko in the lead, and is supported by strong turns from Vera Farmiga and Jeffrey Wright. It will take many more films before Jones begins to challenge Christopher Nolan for the mantle of Britain's best living filmmaker. But on the basis of this, he's well on his way.

Rating:
Verdict: A smart and slick second effort

Twelve Monkeys (USA, 1995)
Directed by Terry Gilliam
Starring Bruce Willis, Madeleine Stowe, Brad Pitt, David Morse

Just as Star Wars shifted the focus of science fiction from inner space to outer space, so there is a trend in the 1980s and early-1990s for time travel films which are more concerned with the mechanics of time travel than its metaphysical implications. For all the intelligence of Back to the Future or The Terminator, their fascinations with how a flux capacitor could actually work leads us to get distracted from the trauma of the characters. Eventually this trend of effects over characters gave us the likes of Timecop, in which time travel is little more than a gimmick to liven up a pedestrian action premise.

In one fell swoop, Twelve Monkeys completely redresses this imbalance which has dogged this area of science fiction for some time. Taking the best elements of the Chris Marker short La Jetee, it draws on the likes of Blade Runner and Slaughterhouse Five to create a chilling and compelling portrait of both a post-apocalyptic future and a chaotic near-present on the brink of destruction.The examination of time travel in Twelve Monkeys centres around Novikov’s self-consistency principle. This complicated area of theoretical physics deals with the issue of paradoxes – for instance, going back in time to kill one’s own grandfather. It essentially postulates that while time travel may be physically and technically possible, the past and future cannot be altered because any intervention by the traveller would create a paradox.

A good cinematic example to illustrate this is the much-maligned ending of Superman, in which Superman reverses time by spinning the Earth backwards so he can avert an earthquake and stop Lois from being killed. In this example, the cause of Superman going back in time is the death of Lois – but if he changes events and she lives, he would have no reason to go back and so Lois would still die. The timelines correct themselves, with cause and effect cancelling each other out.Twelve Monkeys expands this realisation into a fascinating thesis on the futility of humanity and its inability to avert potential, self-imposed disasters. Novikov’s logic is present throughout: Cole is chosen to go back because he is a good observer, rather than some kind of hero who can stop the virus. The scientists who send him there are only interested in finding a cure for their society, rather than stopping the virus at inception. And Cole witnesses his own death but can do nothing to prevent it.Cole and his counterparts are modern-day Cassandras: figures which, in the words of Dr. Railly, have “the agony of foreknowledge combined with impotence to do anything about it.” Cole’s agony is aggravated by the flashbacks he has of the airport, which, without giving too much away, become more significant and poignant as the film rolls on. There is a through-line between Cole’s predicament and that of Billy Pilgrim in Slaughterhouse Five; both characters have some foreknowledge of their own deaths and some form of contempt for the powers-that-be, whether they be generals or scientists.

To prevent such a depressing thesis from weighing the film down, Twelve Monkeys is shot is a deeply disorientating manner. There are many Gilliam tropes involved such as unusual camera angles and cleverly timed zooms which gave a sense of scale and demonstrate how small our protagonists are. Most of the scenes (especially those with Brad Pitt) have an immense kinetic energy, with a script which walks a tightrope between wacky profundity and blathering nonsense. But unlike on his later films, Gilliam’s execution of these scenes is perfect and profundity always wins out.Like Brazil and The Fisher King before it, Twelve Monkeys is a great examination of insanity and the thin line between madness and genius. But what makes this film clever is the way in which our perceptions of madness and sanity shift as the characters develop and more information about the apocalypse comes to light. There is a rich thread running throughout the film about the assumed status and logic of sciences like psychiatry, and how this status is used to manipulate people. This clearly hints back to the work of French philosopher Michael Foucault, whose work in Discipline and Punish explored the relationship between knowledge (e.g. the discipline of psychiatry) and power (the way individuals can be controlled through the received credibility of said discipline).

At the beginning, we are convinced that Cole is the only sane person within the world of the film. The doctors who examine him in 1990 diagnose him as mad on the basis of the accepted wisdom of psychiatry, the ‘new religion’. But by the final half-hour, it is Railly who is convinced that he was telling the truth, while Cole wants to accept that he is delusional. In the end, we don’t know how real anything is any more. We remain glued to the story because of the high stakes and tension, but are just as confused, hysterical and disorientated as the characters, which in itself is testament to the immersive power of the film.This rich, enticing vein of ambiguity runs throughout the screenplay, which comes from the co-writers of Blade Runner. This time round it is not a question of who is human and who is a replicant, but of who is mad or sane. And as in Blade Runner, there is an appealing third possibility – namely that neither distinction matters because the lines between them are blurry, artificial constructs. Like Deckard and Rachael before them, Cole and Railly choose to abandon their intended paths and escape, not just from this dark world but from all concept of reality. Fantasy and reality blur into one in the final section: one moment they are in a cinema showing The Birds, the next Railly is a Hitchcockian blonde who appears as Cole’s salvation.

Aside from its bleak exploration of time travel, Twelve Monkeys is a great political document, subtly tipping its hat to a wide range of contemporary issues. Having a virus which is destined to wipe out most of mankind can be interpreted as a reaction to the growing AIDS pandemic. The film is deeply cynical about political action, depicting the Army of the Twelve Monkeys as “teenagers playing revolution” in the mother of all red herrings. And many of Brad Pitt’s jabberings in the mental hospital are insightful comments about Western culture. Comments about people becoming little more than consumers and being infantilised by television are closely reminiscent of Neil Postman’s arguments in Amusing Ourselves to Death.The performances in Twelve Monkeys are all of the highest calibre. Bruce Willis gives his finest performance as Cole, displaying genuine sensitivity and emotional depth so that we genuinely feel the pain and suffering of his character. The few action sequences in the film are downplayed so that they don’t feel like John McClane has burst into the future. Madeleine Stowe has the same kind of stoic noir beauty that Sean Young has in Blade Runner, managing to show frenzy without ever overcooking it. Brad Pitt is great, managing to play crazy without annoying us, and giving a rounded performance fully deserving of his Oscar nomination. And David Morse is downright chilling in his pivotal role; certainly it’s a million miles from Brutus Howell in The Green Mile.Twelve Monkeys is an outstanding science fiction film written and directed with confidence and intelligence. The performances are superb, the visuals and set design are captivating, the dialogue is both funny and poignant, and the ending is truly perfect. As a Gilliam film it takes pride of place next to Brazil, and it is up there with The Green Mile as one of the greatest films of the 1990s. An utter triumph from every conceivable angle, which will scramble your brain and stay with you forever.

Rating: 5/5
Verdict: Chilling, fascinating and genuinely thought-provoking