12 Monkeys
| Twelve Monkeys | |
|---|---|
| File:Twelve monkeys poster.jpg Twelve Monkeys movie poster Design by Concept Arts | |
| 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 27th, 1995 (USA) |
Running time | 129 min |
| Country | United States |
| 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, madness and memory and is inspired by the French short film La Jetée. The film stars Bruce Willis, Madeleine Stowe, and Brad Pitt.
Plot
James Cole (Willis) is a convicted criminal 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 1996–1997, forcing the few survivors to live underground. To earn a pardon, Cole allows scientists to send him on dangerous missions to the past to collect information on "The Army of the 12 Monkeys" – an organization they believe to be responsible for spreading 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 1990, not 1996 as planned. He is arrested and hospitalized in a mental institution on the diagnosis of Dr. Kathryn Railly (Stowe), where 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 an unsuccessful escape attempt, Cole is placed in restraints, but is then returned to the future, disappearing from his locked room and baffling his doctors.
Back in his own time, Cole is interviewed by the scientists, who play a voice mail message giving the Army of the Twelve Monkeys' location and show photos of Goines. They send him back to the past, and this time – after a brief detour to World War One France – he reaches 1996.
Cole kidnaps Railly and sets out in search of Goines, whom they learn is a founder of the Army of the Twelve Monkeys. When Cole learns that Goines's father (Christopher Plummer) is a famous virologist, he becomes more than ever convinced that he's on the right track. When Cole confronts him, however, Goines denies any involvement with the virus and suggests that wiping out humanity was Cole's idea, originally broached at the psychiatric facility 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's 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, 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 to Cole later, they realize that it is the message the scientists played for Cole 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 from their cab driver that the Army of the Twelve Monkeys is a red herring; all they have done is to 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, however, by a fellow time-traveler sent by the scientists, who gives Cole a handgun and instructions to complete his mission. At the same time, Railly spots the true culprit behind the virus - Dr. Peters, an assistant at the Goines virology lab, who is carrying a briefcase full of vials, about to embark on a tour of the world's major cities. 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 in 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."
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. They later went on to make Lost in La Mancha, despite their protests that they would not make "any more movies about making movies."[1]
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.[2]
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.[3]
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, and 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. A further example of memories and perceptions is that the pivotal character of Dr. Peters is never actually named during the film. The world's memory of Dr. Peters and his deed was lost to history and supplanted by the false memory of a twelve monkeys plot to destroy humanity[4].
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. "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."[5] 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.
Prophesy
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 speaks of medieval and war-time predictions of an apocalypse in the year 1996. Later in the movie, we encounter a medieval evangelist[6] 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 save humanity from itself[7].
In Popular Culture
In one episode of The Simpsons, Bart fabricates a serial killer named Dark Stanley in order to trick his classmates out of their lunches. Whenever Dark Stanley is mentioned, the theme from Twelve Monkeys would play.
References
- ^ "Neon Magazine". 1996-12. Retrieved 2007-01-18.
{{cite web}}: Check date values in:|date=(help) - ^ "Sight and Sound". 1996-04. Retrieved 2007-01-18.
{{cite web}}: Check date values in:|date=(help) - ^ "Copyright Casebook: 12 Monkeys - Universal Studios and Lebbeus Woods". Retrieved 2006-06-21.
- ^ www.dailyscript.com/scripts/twelve_monkeys.html
- ^ "Roger Ebert's Review of Twelve Monkeys". Retrieved 2007-01-18.
- ^ www.dailyscript.com/scripts/twelve_monkeys.html
- ^ http://www.unomaha.edu/jrf/Messiah.htm
External links
