Modern Classics: Twelve Monkeys

Warning: Spoilers

Terry Gilliam has always been an intriguing director, and while some of his films have been accused of being inaccessible, one of his most successful and mainstream films to date is without a doubt 1995’s Twelve Monkeys.  Starring Bruce Willis in a role perfectly tailored to his strengths, as well as Madeleine Stowe and Brad Pitt, Twelve Monkeys was inspired by 1962 French short “La Jetée” (which incidentally can be found online here). The story may appear to be conventional sci-fi fare at first glance, but Gilliam’s take on the script by David Webb Peoples and Janet Peoples is as un-Hollywood as a big Hollywood movie can get.

In a post-apocalyptic world set in 2035, human beings have been forced to live underground after a terrible and mysterious virus killed 5 billion people, leaving only 1% of the world’s population to continue on in a dystopian future where we meet our protagonist, James Cole (Willis). Cole, imprisoned for various violent criminal activities, becomes one of the reluctant “volunteers” of The Scientists, a peculiar group of intellectuals attempting to piece together the origins of the virus in the hopes of finding a cure. Desperate to find out more about the mysterious “Army of the Twelve Monkeys” whom they believe released the virus, the scientists attempt to send Cole back in time to 1996 to gather more information. Time travel, however, is apparently not an exact science and Cole finds himself in 1990, trading one prison for another as he is placed in the care of Dr. Kathryn Railly (Stowe), a psychiatrist at a disturbing mental institution, where his ramblings about being sent to the wrong year and a deadly virus get him in hot water.

Now, the problem with movies involving time travel is they tend to be very confusing and are usually not very impervious to any close inspection, and more often than not, gaping plot holes soon emerge. Twelve Monkeys keeps the rules simpler than most. You can’t change the future; nothing you do will change the original trajectory that time is passing through. Cole’s mission isn’t to try and save the world, but to obtain information about the virus to help the scientists from his present figure out a cure without causing too much of a ripple in the time continuum. It quickly becomes apparent to Cole that the human mind finds it difficult processing being in different times, and he soon becomes very disoriented and confused, in addition to being drugged by the orderlies in the mental asylum.

The film draws many interesting parallels between the past and the present worlds that only seem to exacerbate Cole’s confusion in what is perhaps a subtle indicator of how the two worlds aren’t that very different. Cole is brought before a panel of scientists in his present and he is interrogated by an eerily similar panel of psychiatrists in the past. He is also scrubbed and cleaned by orderlies and guards in both time periods in a similar fashion. The rooms that he is placed in solitary confinement in during both times are virtually identical. Cole eventually gets sent to the correct year of 1996, and it is hinted throughout the film that countless “volunteers” have been sent back throughout the years to all kinds of different times and places by The Scientists. Cole also begins to frequently have run-ins (or hallucinations, it’s not always explicitly clear) with other people from his present in the past; things for Cole become very muddled to say the very least. In steps in Dr. Railly.

We are introduced to her character at a poetry recital, with the poem “The Rubaiyat” by Omar Khayyam echoing the themes of the film:

Yesterday This Day's Madness did prepare;
To-morrow'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.

In a lecture on madness and apocalyptic visions she gives later on, she references Cassandra, a mortal from Greek mythology who is given the gift of being able to foresee the future along with the curse of having no one believe her prophecies of impending doom.  Partly because of the nature of her work, Railly feels drawn to Cole for reasons that she cannot fully explain (until later on), and although she is initially fearful and lacking in faith, she soon begins to believe Cole’s story. And in turn, Cole begins to fall in love with Railly and the life that he could never have, an escape from the harsh reality of his present, where everything to be seen is assembled wreckage from a past he wants to stay in.

Willis is in very good form throughout the film and he lends the story a grounded emotional center. Despite possessing an unsettlingly violent temperament that is always bubbling just under the surface, Cole is a character we empathize with almost instantly. Haunted by a confusing dream of a man getting shot in an airport ever since he was a child, Cole is a reluctant anti-hero desperate to escape a bleak decayed future, and his journey reaches him to the point where he begins to seriously question his own sanity. Used and abused throughout the film by external forces, Cole's suffering is a reminder that in the face of an increasingly technological society, our detachment from the world and each other has only increased even further. More than anything else, Cole desires to be free from control, to be able to live his own unfettered life.

These are themes that Twelve Monkeys has in common with Gilliam’s Brazil, a dystopian work that is more farcical and darkly comedic in tone.  Gilliam has always created uniquely fantastical worlds, and the two films share many stylistic characteristics as he takes us from the seedy graffiti-ridden underbelly of modern day Philadelphia to a desolate future assembled from the crumbling remnants of our present. Twelve Monkeys is a much more serious and somber film however, although outlandishly comedic moments are interspersed throughout. These mainly involve Jeffrey Goines (Pitt), a mental patient who becomes acquainted with Cole in the asylum, an unbalanced character who Cole eventually connects with the Army of the Twelve Monkeys.

Ultimately, the film questions the meaning of sanity and reality, and explores their relative and subjective nature. The inevitability of fate is also an important theme, as throughout Cole’s journey in attempting to discover those behind unleashing the virus, he frequently appears to influence the very events that caused him to come to the past.  A potent sadness permeates the entire film as Cole begins to see his old dream in a new light but too late for Cole to realize that, in a sense, he is helplessly stuck in an unavoidable loop.  In the end, it is somehow fitting that much of the film’s narrative regarding the army of twelve monkeys ends up being nothing more than a red herring, and the research scientist who turns out to be behind the release of the virus engenders an apocalyptic philosophy that echoes the worries of our time, especially with the continually escalating concerns about over-population and global warming.

Verdict: A unique film coming from the unconventional mind of Monty Python alum Terry Gilliam, Twelve Monkeys is an entertaining and engaging journey with rich symbolism and important themes that remain relevant 17 years later.

Movie info:

Runtime: 129 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

Cast: Bruce Willis, Madeleine Stowe, Brad Pitt, Christopher Plummer

Director: Terry Gilliam

Screenplay: David Webb Peoples, Janet Peoples

Cinematography: Roger Pratt

Distributed by: Universal Pictures