12 Monkeys is Peak Brad Pitt

When you think of Brad Pitt, you probably think of a movie star. Or maybe you think about his abs in Fight Club. In most of his roles, he plays the suave and confident guy. There's the cool detachment of Ocean’s Eleven, the angry heroics of Troy, the Pepsi drinking of World War Z. He’s a leading man, always front and center.

But the irony is that his best performances might be the ones where he steps to the side. He is hilarious as the clueless Chad in Burn After Reading. He jumped to fame as the sexy drifter in Thelma and Louise. That's the winning formula for a great Brad Pitt performance: less screen time and more freedom. And 12 Monkeys might be the best performance to come out of it. As Jeffrey Goines, he's not the leading man, he disappears into something riskier and weirder.

Who's the real Jeffrey Goines?

I've always been terrified of Pitt's performance as Jeffrey Goines. Loud, erratic, manic, unpredictable. Everything comes together to transform the performance into something jarring: the twisted tango-like score, the Dutch angles, the chaos slowly building up in the scene. And then, at the center of it all, Jeffrey shouting lines from his weird, idiosyncratic manifesto. In a way, it's repulsive, it makes you want to get as far away as possible.

At the same time, I've always been fascinated by it. Behind the rambling of a madman, it feels like there's a bit of innocence, a wink of knowing that it's all just a joke. You want to get away from someone like that, but you also want to stay and listen. It feels, at the same time, innocent and dangerous.

Jeffrey is never really there; he's behind a mask. He controls the chaos around him with his body and his rapid-fire mouth, but that's the first layer of him. Then, he makes the viewer think that underneath all that apparent craziness, there's nothing to be afraid of. Then again, maybe he's not harmless, maybe there's another layer to him. The mirror of the mirror.

Writing and Acting

Of course, a great character is born on the page. Skimming through the screenplay by Janet and David Peoples, you can see the foundation for what makes Jeffrey a memorable character. In terms of personality, it's all there: the crazy, the prophetic, the charisma.

It's easy to take his quotes and try to build some half-baked philosophy out of it. That's part of the appeal, but it's also part of the built-in ridiculousness of the character. He's not supposed to be taken seriously. And Pitt knows this, but he keeps the act. His performance balances on that line.

This is not one of those deep characters where you have to dig to find out what they mean. It's about the energy, the strange charisma. He takes the revolutionary character, always speaking about the errors of the modern world and exalting the past, longing for a utopian future, and wraps it in insanity. Jeffrey is, at the same time, an exaggeration of how we perceive those characters, and a serious take on them.

Every line of dialogue ramps up through the scene. It's like Jeffrey can't finish a monologue without exploding at one point. His ideas go crazier, his words go louder. Then he stops. Back to zero. He ramps up again. It's a constant stop and go. It's hard to settle into his rhythm because it's unique and meant to throw you off. In a way, it's the opposite of a lullaby, he wants to rattle you awake so that you hear his message loud and clear. It's similar to the idea of a court jester: hiding the truth behind the spectacle. Jeffrey doesn't care if you're listening to him, if you're following his train of thought, he cares about you witnessing it.

Now, it's one thing to write that on the page, and another thing entirely to get that on the performance. There's the acting, the physicality. His hands, mannerisms, facial twitches, voice modulations. The wild running around. The riling up of everyone around him. Flipping off everything and everyone, when he's happy, or angry, or excited.

Brad Pitt really tried, and it paid off. On the DVD commentary for 12 Monkeys, director Terry Gilliam talks at length about Pitt's preparation for the role. How he studied psychiatric patients at a hospital, how he worked with a speech coach to reach the incredible speed he needed for his lines, how he helped create the frenzied look of Jeffrey.

Unfortunately, I can't post the link, but there's a clip on Twitter that shows Pitt preparing for the role at a psychiatric hospital. At the start of the clip, Pitt makes the same faces and expressions you see in the film. The way he laughs, the way he twists his mouth and raises his eyebrows, it's all there. Then, he tries some of those mannerisms, while explaining the logic behind as he does it. Finally, a psychiatrist explains to him how a patient reacts: their movements, their mood swings, happy and angry manics. It's only a few seconds, but it's very interesting to see him creating the way Jeffrey moves and talks. Here it is, in case you're interested: https://x.com/RealEOC/status/1163215019632484353?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

He's not the Main Character

We can’t forget that Jeffrey isn’t the main character. His role is to support. The character only works in relation to Bruce Willis’ Cole. Their dynamic has weight because they are polar opposites.

Cole is all inward tension, clenched jaws, slow movements. He stumbles through the story like walking through a dream he's not quite sure is real. Every scene adds confusion. Everything he thought was true collapses. His mission, his memories, even his sense of time are unstable. He’s defined by doubt.

Jeffrey, by contrast, is an explosion. He bursts into scenes words tumbling out at full speed, body and voice constantly in motion. He’s so kinetic that the camera can barely keep up. He never hesitates. He doesn’t pause to second-guess himself. Whatever he says comes with complete certainty, no matter how absurd or cryptic. His delivery is so confident, it becomes prophetic.

It's about uncertainty versus certainty. Cole doesn’t know what’s real. He questions everything. He’s unsure whether he’s saving the future or destroying it. He’s the one searching for answers. Jeffrey doesn’t ask questions. He declares. He doesn’t care if he’s wrong, because he operates on his own wavelength.

Pitt and Willis play opposing forces. And when Willis is being slow and contained, it's easy for Pitt to steal the scene with his explosiveness.

Jeffrey is such a great character, he makes you want to see everything unfold from his side of things: Cole, clearly delusional, shows up every few years. Each time, Cole's crazier than the last time they met. He's always going on like a rabid dog about a virus, the end of the world. And those ideas are planted in Jeffrey's mind, but he twists them. He gives them his own spin. An insane and charismatic man being fed ideas about the end of the world by a mysterious stranger that shows up every few years. That's a religious thriller right there.

12 Monkeys is one of those movies that's always been around for me; I can't remember the first time I watched it, let alone how many times. After almost 30 years, I never get tired of that performance. It's still chilling, but with those undertones of it all being a game. I had never sat down to analyze why, and after doing it, I think Jeffrey's an even richer character than before.