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Twelve Monkeys is a 1995 science fiction film written by David and Janet Peoples and directed by Terry Gilliam. The movie deals with time travel and memory and is inspired by the French short film La Jetée. The film stars Bruce Willis, Madeleine Stowe, and Brad Pitt.

Plot

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Bruce Willis stars as James Cole, a convict in a post-apocalyptic future in which humans are forced to live underground in a wretched and tyrannical society, after the surface of the Earth was contaminated with a virus that killed most of the human species in 1996–1997. The film has an unusual narrative style, following Cole as he is repeatedly sent back in time by scientists on missions to investigate the origin of the virus -- thought to be linked to a group called The Army of the Twelve Monkeys -- and obtain a sample of the original strain that the scientists can use to formulate a cure and return the human race to the surface. Throughout the film, Cole has recurring dreams involving a chase and a shooting in an airport.

The scientists' time machine is imprecise and Cole often finds himself in the wrong place or time. On his first trip, he arrives in 1990, not 1996 as planned. He is arrested and hospitalized in a mental institution on the diagnosis of Dr. Kathryn Railly (Stowe), and he encounters Jeffrey Goines (Pitt), a fellow mental patient with animal-rights and anti-consumerist leanings. Cole desperately attempts to warn Railly and the other psychiatrists of the impending catastrophe, and tries to leave a voice mail on a number monitored by the scientists in the future, but is unable to. After an unsuccessful escape attempt (aided by Goines), Cole is placed in restraints but is then returned to the future, disappearing from his locked room and baffling his doctors.

Back in his own time, Cole is interviewed by the scientists, who play a voice mail message giving the Army of the Twelve Monkeys' location and saying they are responsible for the virus, but Cole denies having left that message. The scientists also show him a series of photographs, from which Cole identifies a picture of Goines at the head of a pre-plague rally.

After arriving in 1996 on his next trip back in time, Cole kidnaps Railly and sets out in search of Goines, who they learn was a founder of the Army of the Twelve Monkeys. Cole becomes increasingly convinced they are responsible for the virus after learning that Goines' father is a famous virologist. Upon being confronted by Cole, however, Goines denies any involvement with the virus and suggests that wiping out humanity was Cole's idea, originally broached at the psychiatric facility in 1990. Alarmed by this possibility, and beginning to suspect that he is in fact delusional, he decides to turn himself in to authorities, but vanishes again as police approach.

After Cole's disappearance, Railly begins to doubt her diagnosis of Cole after she discovers numerous signs that he is in fact traveling through time. Cole, on the other hand, is convinced that his future experiences are hallucinations, and longs to return to the pre-plague world and be with Railly. He convinces the scientists to send him back again.

Reunited in 1996, shortly before the initial outbreak of the virus, Railly attempts to settle the question of Cole's sanity by leaving a voice mail on the number provided by Cole. When she recites her message to Cole later, they realize that it matches, verbatim, the message the scientists played for Cole prior to his second mission, and they both know that the coming plague is real. They make plans to fly to Key West to avoid the virus.

On their way to the airport, they discover that the Army of the Twelve Monkeys has freed the animals from the city zoo, and does not appear to be related to the epidemic. Cole, now in love with Railly and the music and open air of the pre-infection world, decides that he has done his duty to the future. At the airport, he leaves a last message telling the scientists they are on the wrong track following the Army of the Twelve Monkeys, and that he will not return to his own time. He is soon confronted by a fellow time-traveler sent by the scientists, who gives Cole a handgun and instructions to complete his mission. At the same time, Railly identifies the true culprit behind the virus - Dr. Peters, an assistant at the Goines virology lab. After fighting his way through security, Cole is fatally shot by police as he pulls a gun to stop Peters from boarding his plane. As Cole dies in Railly's arms, she makes eye contact with small boy - the young James Cole witnessing his own death, the scene that will replay in his dreams in years to come.

Dr. Peters, safely on board his plane and having already released the first of several virus samples in his briefcase, sits down next to the lead scientist from the future (Carol Florence). After some small talk with Peters, she introduces herself: "Jones is my name. I'm AN insurance."

Themes

James Cole (initials "J. C.") is a Christ-figure "sent from another world to try to save this world for the benefit of all humanity." His death, caused by chasing Dr. Peters, makes it possible for the (future) world to live, by letting the scientists know where to find a non-mutated form of the virus. He wears a blood-stained shirt, in which the letters "Chris-" are the only ones still visible.

The film's themes of insanity, drugs and time travel permeate many of Gilliam's films, most notably The Fisher King, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and Time Bandits. Stylistically the film is much like Brazil with its army of bureaucrats using an odd collection of television tubes to monitor Cole as he journeys through the past, further promoting the theme that soulless bureaucrats will inherit the earth or perhaps have been in charge all along.

James Cole exhibits classic delusional schizophrenic symptoms: switching between realities, believing that he is being monitored by implants, and can predict the future. He hears voices when the scientists analyze him and the future he describes is a doomsday scenario. Of course, the irony in the film is that these are not delusions.

Trivia

This article contains a list of miscellaneous information. Please relocate any relevant information into other sections or articles. (June 2007)

• During one scene Cole and Railly watch Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo, and the scene that appears is that of Scottie and Madeleine in Big Basin Redwoods State Park where Madeleine looks at the growth rings of a felled redwood and traces back events in her past life as Carlotta Valdes ("here I was born ... and here I died"). In addition to resonating with the movie's larger themes, Cole and Railly later have a similar conversation while the same music from Vertigo is repeated. "He's not simply providing a movie in-joke. The point, I think, is that Cole's own life is caught between rewind and fast-forward, and he finds himself repeating in the past what he learned in the future, and vice versa." This scene can also be considered Gilliam's tip of the hat to Chris Marker, whose La Jetée inspired Twelve Monkeys. La Jetée features images of tree rings in several museum scenes, and the connection between La Jetée and the scene from Vertigo is also observed explicitly by Marker in his 1982 documentary montage Sans Soleil.
• A "making of" documentary about the film, The Hamster Factor and Other Tales of Twelve Monkeys, was made by Keith Fulton and Louis Pepe, who later went on to make Lost in La Mancha, despite their protests that they would not make "any more movies about making movies."
• Lebbeus Woods, an architect, sued the producers of the film, claiming they copied his work "Neomechanical Tower (Upper) Chamber." Woods won a "six figure sum," and allowed the film to continue to be screened.
• Pitt took the role of Jeffrey in order to get rid of his "pretty boy" image. He purposely tried to make the character as unattractive as possible, to the point of cutting his own hair. The crew also took his cigarettes away so that he would seem to be more crazy than usual.
• The scene where Cole wanders post-apocalypse Philadelphia was not originally supposed to be winter. After the studio delayed the film's shooting, Gilliam decided he preferred the isolated look of winter.
• Like Brazil, also directed by Gilliam, this film uses fresnel lenses in its set design.
• The poetry reading interrupted by Dr. Railly's pager includes the following quatrain from the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, which deals with the themes of time and destiny:

"Yesterday This Day's Madness did prepare;
Tomorrow's Silence, Triumph or Despair:
Drink! for you know not whence you came, nor why:

Drink! for you know not why you go, nor where."

• Additional subtle references to time, time travel, and monkeys are scattered throughout the film, including the Woody Woodpecker "Time Tunnel" cartoon playing on the TV in a hotel room, and a monkey taking a sandwich to the boy thought to be trapped in a well.

External links

• Template:Dmoz
• Twelve Monkeys at Rotten Tomatoes
• Twelve Monkeys at Internet Movie Database

References

1. http://www.usask.ca/relst/jrpc/art8-cinematicchrist.html
2. http://www.unomaha.edu/jrf/Messiah.htm
3. "Roger Ebert's Review of Twelve Monkeys". Retrieved 2007-01-18.
4. "Neon Magazine". 1996-12. Retrieved 2007-01-18. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
5. "Copyright Casebook: 12 Monkeys - Universal Studios and Lebbeus Woods". Retrieved 2006-06-21.
6. "Sight and Sound". 1996-04. Retrieved 2007-01-18. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)

• Articles with trivia sections from June 2007
• 1995 films
• American films
• Universal Pictures films
• Foreign films shot in Canada
• Psychological science fiction films
• Dystopian films
• Films directed by Terry Gilliam
• Films shot in Montreal
• Post-apocalyptic science fiction films
• Best Science Fiction Film Saturn
• Time travel films
• Philadelphia in film and television
• Psychiatrist films