12 Monkeys

Twelve Monkeys
film poster by Brian Bysouth
Directed by	Terry Gilliam
Written by	David Webb Peoples, Janet Peoples
Produced by	Charles Roven, Lloyd Phillips
Starring	Bruce Willis Madeleine Stowe Brad Pitt Christopher Plummer David Morse
Cinematography	Roger Pratt
Edited by	Mick Audsley
Music by	Paul Buckmaster
Distributed by	Universal Pictures (USA) PolyGram Filmed Entertainment (UK)
Release dates	December 27, 1995 (USA)
Running time	129 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$29,000,000 (estimated)

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

Plot

James Cole (Willis) is a convicted criminal living in a grim post-apocalyptic future. The Earth's surface has been contaminated by a virus so deadly that it killed five billion people in 1996 and 1997, forcing the surviving population to live underground. In the beginning of the movie, Cole is forced to "volunteer" on a mission to the surface in a barren Philadelphia. He collects bugs and is returned to the underground where another mission is proposed. To earn a pardon, Cole allows scientists to send him on dangerous missions to the past to collect information on the virus. If possible, he is to obtain a sample of the original virus so a cure can be made, enabling the human race to return to the surface. Throughout the film, Cole is troubled with recurring dreams involving a chase and a shooting in an airport.

The scientists' time machine is imprecise. On Cole's first trip, he arrives in Baltimore in 1990, not 1996 as planned. He is arrested and hospitalized in a mental institution on the diagnosis of Dr. Kathryn Railly (Stowe). There he encounters Jeffrey Goines (Pitt), a fellow mental patient with animal rights and anti-consumerist leanings. Cole tries unsuccessfully to leave a voice mail on a number monitored by the scientists in the future. After a failed escape attempt, Cole is placed in restraints and locked in a cell, but is then returned to the future, a disappearance which baffles his doctors.

File:Twelve Monkeyspittwillis.jpg

James Cole (Willis) with the mentally unstable Jeffrey Goines (Pitt)

Back in his own time, Cole is interviewed by the scientists, who play a distorted voice mail message which gives the location of the Army of the Twelve Monkeys and states that they are responsible for the virus. He is also shown photos of numerous people, including Goines. The scientists send him back to the past, and this time - after a brief detour to World War I France - he reaches 1996.

Cole kidnaps Railly and sets out in search of Goines, whom they learn is founder of the Army of the Twelve Monkeys. When Cole learns that Goines's father (Plummer) is a famous virologist, he becomes more than ever convinced that he's on the right track. When confronted, however, Goines denies any involvement with the virus and suggests that wiping out humanity was Cole's idea, originally broached at the asylum in 1990. Cole vanishes again as police approach.

After Cole disappears, Railly begins to doubt her diagnosis of Cole when she finds evidence that he is telling the truth. Cole, on the other hand, convinces himself that his future experiences are hallucinations, and longs to return to the pre-plague world and be with Railly. He persuades the scientists to send him back again.

Reunited in 1996 Philadelphia, 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 later, Cole remembers it as the message the scientists played prior to his second mission. They both now realize 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 learn that the Army of the Twelve Monkeys is a red herring; all they have done is delay traffic by releasing all the animals in the zoo. Cole decides 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 Jose (Seda), an acquaintance from his own time, who gives Cole a handgun and instructions from the scientists to complete his mission. At the same time, Railly spots the true culprit behind the virus - Dr. Peters (Morse), an assistant at the Goines virology lab, who is carrying a briefcase full of vials, about to embark on a tour of the cities which Cole had earlier memorized as being the path of the viral outbreak. 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 a small boy - the young James Cole witnessing his own death; the scene that will replay in his dreams for years to come.

Dr. Peters, safely aboard, 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 in insurance."

Cast

• Bruce Willis as James Cole
• Madeleine Stowe as Kathryn Railly
• Brad Pitt as Jeffrey Goines
• Christopher Plummer as Dr. Goines
• Jon Seda as Jose
• Michael Chance as Scarface
• Christopher Meloni as Lt. Halperin
• David Morse as Dr. Peters
• Frank Gorshin as Dr. Fletcher
• Vernon Campbell as Tiny
• Lisa Gay Hamilton as Teddy
• H. Michael Walls as Botanist
• Bob Adrian as Geologist
• Simon Jones as Zoologist
• Carol Florence as Astrophysicist/Jones
• Bill Raymond as Microbiologist
• Ernest Abuba as Engineer
• Annie Golden as Woman Cabbie
• Irma St. Paule as Poet
• Joey Perillo as Detective Franki
• Bruce Kirkpatrick as Policeman No.
• Joseph Melito as Young Cole

Production

A "making of" documentary about the film, The Hamster Factor and Other Tales of Twelve Monkeys, was made by Keith Fulton and Louis Pepe. The duo later went on to make Lost in La Mancha, despite their protests that they would not make "any more movies about making movies."

The scene in which Cole wanders post-apocalypse Philadelphia was not originally supposed to be set in the winter. After the studio delayed the film's shooting, however, Gilliam decided that he preferred the isolated look of winter.

Architect Lebbeus Woods sued the producers of the film, claiming that they copied his work "Neomechanical Tower (Upper) Chamber". Woods won a "six figure sum", and allowed the film to continue to be screened.

Like Brazil, also directed by Gilliam, this film uses fresnel lenses in its set design.

Themes

Madness

Madness and sanity are important themes in the film, and Gilliam deliberately left certain scenes ambiguous, allowing for an interpretation that Cole is "mentally divergent" and the whole film a manifestation of his psychosis. From the sleeve notes to the DVD release: "Between the past and the future, sanity and madness, dreams and reality, lies the mystery of the Twelve Monkeys."

Memory

The film deals with the subjective nature of memories and their effect upon perceptions of reality. Some examples of false memories are:

1. Cole's recall of the airport shooting which is altered each time he has a dream.
2. A mentally divergent man at the asylum who has false memories.
3. Railly telling Cole she "remembered him like this" in the scene where hardly recognizable Cole and Railly are in disguise for the first time.
4. The concept that the 12 monkeys were responsible for the virus was due to the call placed by Railly and that in the future the reason he believed it was the 12 monkeys responsible for the virus was because of the call, a paradox created due to the time travel.

Time

During a 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. As Roger Ebert has described the moment, "He's not simply providing a movie in-joke. The point 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 from Vertigo is also observed explicitly by Chris Marker, whose La Jetée inspired Twelve Monkeys, in his 1982 documentary montage Sans Soleil.

The poetry reading interrupted by Dr. Railly's pager includes the following quatrain from the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam:

"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."

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.

Prophecy

There is a recurring motif in the film regarding the depiction of time travelers as prophets. During Katherine Railly's lecture on "Madness and Apocalyptic Visions", she recounts the Cassandra myth, and speaks of medieval and war-time predictions of an apocalypse in the year 1996. Later in the movie, we encounter a medieval evangelist who calls out to James "You're one of us" and Railly's photograph reveals that the soldier from 1917 was actually Cole's friend Jose.

Furthermore, religious studies academics have authored essays claiming that the lead character James Cole (initials J.C.) fits the cinematic character type of a Christ-figure, a savior sent to sacrifice himself in order to save humanity.

Soundtrack

The film makes frequent use of the "Introduccion" from Astor Piazzolla's Suite Punta del Este as the signature theme from the film.

External links

• 12 Monkeys at Curlie
• Monkeys 12 Monkeys at Rotten Tomatoes
• Twelve Monkeys at IMDb
• 12 Monkeys at AllMovie

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