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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 who is plagued by a vivid, recurring dream 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.

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. Almost all of humanity has been wiped out by an incurable virus, with the few survivors living in a wretched and tyrannical society deep underground. 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 their return. Cole and other convicts are sent back in time to discover the origin of the virus and retrieve samples. The scientists wish to study the virus in its unmutated form to enable them to produce a cure. The time travelers are asked to leave voice mail messages at a phone number monitored by the scientists in the future.

The scientists initially attempt to send Cole back to October 1996, a few weeks before the outbreak of the disease. He appears in Baltimore in April 1990 and is arrested after a violent encounter with police. Due to his incoherent story, Cole is institutionalized at a psychiatric facility, and placed under the care of Dr. Kathryn Railly (Stowe) who strongly feels as though she has seen Cole before. There Cole meets Jeffrey Goines (Pitt), a deranged animal rights and anti-consumerism activist. When Cole is interviewed by Railly and other doctors, he desperately attempts to warn them of the impending catastrophe and inquires about the Army of the Twelve Monkeys. He is grudgingly permitted to call the scientists' phone number, but discovers no voice mailbox.

Goines helps Cole escape the ward by providing a key and creating a major disturbance, but Cole is quickly recaptured and placed in restraints in an isolation room with no obvious possibility of escape. Cole is then returned to the future, disappearing from his locked room, and baffling Railly and the institution's authorities.

After returning to the future, Cole is interviewed by the scientists. They play a voice mail message giving the Army of the Twelve Monkeys location, saying "They're the ones that did it", but Cole denies having left that message. The scientists also show him a series of photographs from the outbreak time-period to see if any of the images are familiar to Cole from his experiences in 1990. Among the photographs is a picture of Goines at the head of a rally.

Throughout the film, Cole has recurring dreams involving a man in a ponytail with a briefcase with travel stickers on it running through an airport, another man in a mustache and long blonde hair chasing him and being shot, and a blonde woman chasing after them and screaming. The dream varies with each instance, with the ponytail man resembling Goines in one instance.

In a second attempt to send Cole back to 1996, assured that "this time" they would get him to the correct destination, he arrives briefly in the middle of a World War I battle. He encounters Jose, a fellow inmate, who has also been sent to the past. Cole is shot in the leg while reaching toward a wounded Jose, and a moment later is propelled forward in time to the original target date, November, 1996.

Between 1990 and 1996, Dr. Railly has taken an interest in the Cassandra Syndrome. She publishes a book on the topic, citing examples of unheeded prophecies of doom dating back to the 14th century. Cole finds a poster announcing one of her lectures, and after a book-signing session, kidnaps her to aid him in finding the Army of the Twelve Monkeys. She continues to believe that Cole is delusional, and realizes from media accounts that she and Cole are the subject of a massive manhunt. However, she ignores several opportunities to escape, and begins to assist Cole in his quest. She even removes the WWI bullet from his leg when he informs her that he has been shot.

Also prominent in the news at the time is the story of a boy in Fresno, California who is trapped in a well. Cole tells Railly that he remembers coverage of that story from when he was a child and reveals to her that the whole thing is a prank, and the boy is really hiding in a barn.

Cole uses his photographic memory of the pictures he was shown by the scientists to locate the office of a bunch of well-meaning but ultimately ineffectual young animal rights activists who promote their ideas through leafleting and legal protests. Cole is sure he has found the source of the outbreak, not only because Goines is in charge of the organization but also because Goines' father is a famous virologist with access to deadly biological agents. Goines, however, became disenchanted with legal protest and formed a splinter group of twelve activists, The Army of the Twelve Monkeys, who plan more direct action such as freeing animals from zoos and research facilities. However, Goines quit the group to work at his father's lab, saying that he would personally oversee any animal testing there to ensure humane treatment.

Cole puts Railly in the trunk of his car and tracks Goines to a conference at his father's mansion. Cole enters the mansion and attempts to question Goines about the origin of the virus. Goines suggests that releasing a worldwide pandemic was an idea Cole originally broached at the psychiatric facility in 1990. Cole is highly disturbed by the possibility that he was partially responsible for the pandemic and begins to embrace Railly's theory that he is delusional and has created the virus and the time-traveling story in his head. As police and dogs from the mansion approach, Railly pleads with Cole to turn himself in. Cole vanishes suddenly, leaving a surprised Railly to explain her captivity and subsequent flight to disbelieving detectives.

The detectives show further doubt in Railly's story when an analyst confirms that the bullet she removed from Cole's leg dates back to World War I. This revelation, along with the confirmation in the news that the boy in Fresno had actually been hiding in a nearby barn, causes Railly to have her own doubts. She searches through a series of WWI photographs. Jose had earned a footnote in history books as a shell shocked soldier whose hysteria had caused him to "forget" the French language entirely, replaced by an unrecognizable dialect of English. Featured in the background of a picture of Jose was Cole, reaching out to him. Now convinced that Cole's story is true, Railly returns to the office of the animal-rights activists to ask them more questions.

After returning to the future, Cole is congratulated by the scientists for bringing back vital information that will help them retake the surface of the planet. However, Cole now believes his future experiences are hallucinations and longs to return to 1996 and be with Railly. He persuades the scientists to send him on a third mission back in time. Back in Philadelphia in 1996, he finds Railly at the animal-rights activists' office, and admits to her that he is crazy and, after being attacked by an angry pimp, pulls out his tooth containing the device which the scientists in the future use to bring him back. Convinced that he is not crazy, Railly calls the scientists' voice mail number, and leaves a message with what she thinks is a carpet cleaning company. 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 put on disguises (Cole with a mustache and a long blonde wig, and Railly in a blonde wig) and make plans to fly to Key West to avoid the virus.

After Goines' splinter group frees the animals from the Philadelphia Zoo, they leave spray painted messages around the city indicating that the Army of the Twelve Monkeys "Did It", leading the future scientists to incorrectly attribute the release of the virus to Goines and his "Twelve Monkeys." Railly and Cole are momentarily heartened to discover the Twelve Monkeys' plot had nothing to do with 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. Railly sees Dr. Peters at the airport and after glancing at a newspaper picture, recognizes him as the elder Goines' assistant whom she recognises from one of her lectures. She is horrified by the realization that he intends to carry the unmutated virus to every city where the disease is known to have originated. Simultaneously, Cole is confronted by Jose who, based on Cole's message, has been sent to the airport. He provides Cole with a gun just as Railly informs Cole that Dr. Peters is the culprit. After a scuffle and argument with security, Cole is fatally shot by police as he pulls the gun to stop Peters from boarding his plane. As Cole dies in Railly's arms, she returns the sad, steady gaze of a small boy. The young James Cole is witnessing his own death, the scene that will replay in his dreams in years to come.

Dr. Peters hurries away from the security area during the shooting and is able to board the plane. Seated next to Peters is the lead scientist from the future (Carol Florence). She introduces herself after some small talk with Peters: "Jones is my name. — I'm in 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