Twelve Monkeys

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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. It also features Jon Seda, Simon Jones, Carol Florence, Frank Gorshin, David Morse, and Joseph Melito.

1 Synopsis
2 Criticism of institutional psychiatry
3 Trivia
4 External links

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Synopsis

Bruce Willis stars as James Cole, a criminal in the 2020s 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."

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 movie has an unusual narrative style. The viewer will be confused at the first viewing and able to piece together the story only towards the end of the movie. Stowe plays a psychiatrist and Pitt, in an Oscar-nominated performance, plays a man who crosses paths with Cole on several occasions.

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

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 of a phone call to an answering machine monitored by future scientists. Cole and others are sent back in time to find the origin of the disease before 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 that convinces the authorities that he is insane -- not least because he claims to be a time traveller from an apocalyptic future. He is institutionalized and placed under the care of Dr. Kathryn Railly (Madeleine Stowe).

While there, Cole meets Jeffrey Goines (Brad Pitt), a seriously deranged animal rights and anti-consumerist activist. The extended encounter between Cole and Goines weaves Goines's beliefs into the fabric of the film's treatment of disease and time travel.

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 returns to the future nevertheless, baffling the authorities.

In a second attempt to send Cole back to 1996, he arrives briefly in the middle of a battle during World War I. While he's still trying to orient himself 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. Jose and Cole are photographed after Cole is shot in the leg, and later it is revealed that Jose 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 manages to arrive at the target date, about six weeks before the disease broke out during the Christmas season, in the course of this second attempt. Between 1990 and 1996, Dr. Railly has taken an interest in prophets of doom who claim to be time-travelers warning of a disease that would destroy the world. 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 wounded in a trench. She also learns that his assertion that a boy supposedly trapped in a well is actually playing a prank is true. Others believe that she is a victim of the Stockholm Syndrome, however.

The pair manage to track down the Army of the Twelve Monkeys and finds Goines, the leader. Cole, now in love with Railly and the open air of a music-filled world, decides that he has served his duty and knocks out a tracking device in his teeth. Railly reports their findings to the scientists of the future by leaving a message on an answering machine. Cole then realizes that a deteriorated copy of the message she leaves is the cause of his very mission, and they realize that what he has been claiming all along is true.

Still intent on an escape to Key West, the pair disguise themselves and travel to the airport, where Cole leaves another voicemail which asserts that the scientists are on the wrong track following the Army of the Twelve Monkeys and that he's not coming back. Meanwhile Railly realizes that Dr. Peters, played by David Morse is about to carry the original virus onto an airplane, and in the course of their 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 scene is but a hauntingly simple, expanded version of the dream that opens the film.

The movie then ends as the lead scientist, played by Carol Florence, takes the seat next to Dr. Peters, introducing herself as "in insurance." Cole's mission seems to have succeeded after all. Then again, "in insurance" may mean that the scientist is there to ensure the disease's spread, or to obtain a strain of the original virus in order to assist the people of the future in developing a cure. Such an open ending is consistent with Terry Gilliam's storytelling style.

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

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Criticism of institutional psychiatry

Image:12monkeys 01.jpg In both future and present time periods, Cole copes with institutions of professional psychiatry. Though less apparent in the future period, a planned society with scientists in authority, control and manipulation of the population is asserted, presumably through the Permanent Emergency Code, by "diagnosing" inmates with "social diseases" such as "Violence", "Antisocial (Level) 6", "Defiance", "Insolence", and "Disregard of Authority", completely blurring the line between prison and mental institution. This thematic criticism of the role of psychiatric institutions in the shaping of popular expectations and behavior parallels the modern history evalution made by Adam Curtis in The Century of the Self. Simply put, these inquire whether psychiatric institutions have filled the secular role formerly occupied by the Church in historical religious societies.

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Trivia

Towards the end of the film there is a scene set in a movie theater. The film seen 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 Valdez ("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.

An additional irony can be seen in the scene in the movie theatre lobby, where Madeleine Stowe and Bruce Willis embrace. The irony in this is that, in the scene that was just shown from the movie Vertigo, an actor named James embraces a character named Madeleine, whereas here, a character named James embraces an actress named Madeleine.

Simon Jones plays one of the scientists who sends the Willis character back to the 1990s. Jones also played the time-travelling Arthur Dent in the venerable BBC production of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, the final installment of which likewise concludes with the song What a Wonderful World as performed by Louis Armstrong. Jones has appeared in other Gilliam films.

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 story told by self-proclaimed time traveller John Titor has strong parallels with the story line of The Twelve Monkeys.

The notion of a time machine that projects the traveller into the past in the nude (i.e., without any equipment) also appears in the Terminator movies and in David Drake's novel Birds of Prey.

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.

In the animated short film World Record (from The Animatrix) the runner's coach acts and talks like Goines. According to the director, Brad Pitt was an inspiration for the character.

In one scene you can see Bruce Willis pass a wall with posters on it, saying "MUSE" and specifying "at the Vortex," presumably advertising the performance of a band. Curiously the poster seems to be typeset using the same font that the british band Muse uses. Rumour has it that Muse's frontman, Matt Bellamy, once said that Twelve Monkeys is his favourite film. Certain facts counter this connection to Muse: for instance, the band's official tour archive webpage lists no plays at the "Vortex" club between 1995 and 1998 (12 Monkeys was made in 1995), and a thread on a Muse-related message board thread provides evidence of the existence of a second, earlier band named "Muse" (along with screencaptures from the film), as well as the fact that prior to 1998 Muse was actually named "Rocket Baby Dolls" (their Wikipedia article corroborates this).

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.