12 Monkeys

Twelve Monkeys
File:Twelve monkeys ver2.jpg
Directed by	Terry Gilliam
Written by	David Webb Peoples, Janet Peoples
Produced by	Charles Roven
Starring	Bruce Willis Madeleine Stowe Brad Pitt
Distributed by	Universal Pictures (USA) PolyGram Filmed Entertainment (UK)
Release dates	December 27th, 1995 (USA)
Running time	129 min
Language	English
Budget	$29,000,000 (estimated)

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.

Synopsis

Bruce Willis stars as James Cole, a criminal in 2035 plagued by dreams of a man being shot in an airport. Humans are forced to live underground, sealed from a surface contaminated with a virus that killed most of the human species in 1996–1997. The disease is believed to have arisen as an act of bioterrorism by a mysterious group calling itself "The Army of the Twelve Monkeys."

The movie has an unusual narrative style. Stowe plays a skilled psychiatrist and Pitt, in an Oscar-nominated performance, plays Jeffrey Goines, a very mentally unstable man who crosses paths with Cole on several occasions. Template:Spoiler

As a convict, Cole is forced to "volunteer" for dangerous missions to the surface in a biohazard suit, exploring a deserted Philadelphia for biological specimens. The abandoned city is now inhabited by wild animals. Cole proves to be a careful observer with excellent memory and is "volunteered" to participate in a more ambitious branch of the program.

The scientists of the future have invented a crude method of time travel. Travelers cannot be sure of the exact time and place to which they are sent, and they are badly disoriented after arriving at the past and upon return, facilitated by such means as making a phone call to an answering machine monitored by future scientists. Cole and other convicts are sent back in time to find the origin of the disease, so that a scientist can be sent back to study the virus before it ever mutated.

The scientists try to send Cole back to October 1996 on his first trip, a few weeks before the outbreak of the disease. He lands in April 1990 instead. He is arrested after a violent encounter with a police officer. He is institutionalized and placed under the care of Dr. Kathryn Railly (Stowe). There Cole meets Jeffrey Goines (Pitt), a seriously deranged animal rights and anti-consumerism activist.

Goines helps Cole escape the ward by creating a major disturbance, but he is quickly recaptured and placed in metal restraints in an isolation cell with seemingly no possibility of an escape. Cole is then brought back to the future, disappearing from his locked cell, and baffling the authorities.

In a second attempt to send Cole back to 1996, he arrives briefly in the middle of a World War I battle. He encounters Jose, another inmate, who has been sent back to retrieve him from this mistaken arrival and has been wounded in the head during the attempt. Cole is shot in the leg while trying to chase after Jose, and a moment later, he is propelled forward in time to the target date, November of 1996.

Between 1990 and 1996, Dr. Railly has taken an interest in prophets of doom. She publishes a book on the topic, citing examples dating back to the 14th century. Cole finds a poster announcing one of her talks, and kidnaps her after a book-signing session to aid his mission. She believes he is delusional, but begins to help him after he passes on opportunities to harm her.

Cole is gradually convinced by Railly that he is merely delusional, but she begins to take him seriously when she removes a World War I bullet from his leg and finds a photograph, taken during that conflict, in which Cole is shown reaching out to a wounded man in a trench (Jose). Jose, trapped in World War I, has earned a small footnote in history when French doctors decide that he has forgotten French and retained English with an unrecognized dialect as a result of shell shock. Cole then claims that a breaking news story in California about a boy supposedly trapped in a well is actually a prank, which turns out to be true.

The pair manage to track down the Army of the Twelve Monkeys and find the leader, Goines. Cole, now in love with Railly and the open air of a music-filled world, decides that he has served his duty and gouges out a tracking device in his teeth. Railly jokingly reports their findings to the scientists of the future by leaving a message on an answering machine, as Cole was instructed. Cole realizes that it was a deteriorated copy of this message that was the very cause of his mission.

Cole once again dreams of a man with a ponytail running on plane, who now looks like Goines.

Intent on an escape to Key West, the pair disguise themselves and travel to the airport. Cole leaves another voicemail which asserts that the scientists are on the wrong track following the Army of the Twelve Monkeys, and that he is not coming back. Railly realizes that Dr. Peters (David Morse) is about to carry the original virus onto an airplane. Trying to stop Peters, Cole is fatally shot by law enforcement. As he dies in Railly's arms, she looks into the eyes of a small boy — the young James Cole.

The lead scientist from the future (Carol Florence) takes the seat next to Dr. Peters, introducing herself as "Jones... in insurance."

Template:Endspoiler

Themes

It has been suggested that Cole had to die due to his decision to remain in his past, which is "not allowed", perhaps by the rules of the society that sent him or by the laws of time travel.

James Cole (initials "J. C.") is a Christ-figure, "sent from another world to try and 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.

The movie operates on the premise of a "fixed timeline" — the past cannot be changed, a viewpoint known as the Novikov self-consistency principle.

Origins

Writers David and Janet Peoples were approached by producer Robert Kosberg to do an adaptation of a French New Wave film called La Jetée (1962) made by Chris Marker. The film is composed almost entirely of black and white photographs and set in Paris after World War III. It was an apocalyptic vision in reaction to the threat of nuclear annihilation that became prominent in the 1950s and 1960s. The screenwriting couple wasn't that keen on the idea, however.

Kosberg got the Peoples to watch La Jetee again and the couple began to see possibilities for a different, more detailed take on the material. They set out to write a challenging piece of fiction that not only manipulated conventional views of time but that also dealt with the notion of madness. Janet explained in an interview, "We were very interested in asking questions like 'Is this man mad? And how about the prophets of the past, were they mad? Were they true prophets? Were they coming from another time? What are all the different possibilities?'"

After showing the finished screenplay to Marker and getting his blessing, the Peoples were faced with the daunting task of finding someone who would not only click with the material but also have the visual flair that the story needed. The couple figured that the only director to handle such tricky subject matter was somebody like Ridley Scott or Terry Gilliam. The theme of madness that plays such a prominent role in the script fit right in with Gilliam's preoccupations and so he seemed the natural choice to direct. As luck would have it, the filmmaker was between films and looking for work after several years of seeing potential projects fall through for various reasons.

Gilliam was also eager to take a lot of Hollywood money (a $30 million budget) and create a strange art film that would fly in the face of the traditional mainstream movie. "The idea that someone's writing a script like this in Hollywood and getting the studio to pay for it was pretty extraordinary. So I thought let's continue to see how much money we can get the studio to spend," Gilliam said in an interview.

Cast

• Bruce Willis - James Cole
• Madeleine Stowe - Kathryn Railly
• Brad Pitt - Jeffrey Goines
• Frank Gorshin - Dr. Fletcher
• David Morse - Dr. Peters
• Christopher Plummer - Dr. Goines
• Michael Chance - Scarface
• Jon Seda - Jose
• Christopher Meloni - Lt. Halperin
• Simon Jones - Zoologist
• Joseph Melito - Young James Cole

Trivia

• Towards the end of the film there is a scene set in a movie theater. The film shown playing in the background of these shots is 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"). As well as obviously resonating with larger themes in Twelve Monkeys, 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.
• The closed captioning for the home versions of the film provide clues about details of scenes not apparent upon viewing without the subtitles. For example, the identity of a female's voice in a voicemail message, and of a passenger on a plane are made explicit.
• 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.
• Like Brazil, also directed by Gilliam, this film contains a fresnel lens.

See also

• Cassandra Syndrome

External links

• Twelve Monkeys at IMDb
• Twelve Monkeys at Curlie