Twelve Monkeys (1995)

 

Twelve Monkeys (1995)

 

James Cole to Kathryn Railly: “I want the future to be unknown. I want to become a whole person again.
I want this to be the present. I want to stay here this time, with you.”

-          From “Twelve Monkeys”

 

Probably the boldest, zero-budget, SF film ever made was Writer/Director Chris Marker’s “La Jette” (1962). It was short film, shot in B&W, and presented as a Slideshow with Narration (Jean Négroni, the only voice we hear), yet captivated Art House Audiences around the World with its tale of Time Travel and the Inescapability of Fate. It plays with the Confounding and often Fatalistic Concept of a Causal Time Loop, which one of the ways of addressing the narrative issue of a Time Paradox, something no SF Author dare ignore if you have your Characters Time-Travel into the Past, because if you do, you risk changing the Past, and if you change the Past, you’re almost inevitably changing the Future. “La Jette” is set in a Near-Future Dystopia and the unnamed Hero (Davos Hanich) is a Prisoner forced into Dangerous Experiments. He Travels back into the Past and then a Farther Future to save the denizens of a Post-Apocalyptic Paris. He succeeds, which should create a Paradox, but in a heavily Foreshadowed Final Twist, he finds he was always trapped in a Loop, there’re no Paradoxes, what happened in the Past created a Future that can’t be altered, the Time Travel was Pre-Ordained part of the Loop, and all was entirely Deterministic. This Determinism is established in the Final Revelation, as the Hero realizes that as a child he witnessed his own death. It is among the most carefully Logical Time Travel films ever made.

 

“Twelve Monkeys” is a remake of “La Jette.” It was Directed by Terry Gilliam working from a script by Writers David Peoples, whose impressive resume includes a lot of SF,F&H, including co-Writer for "Blade Runner" (1982), and being the main Writer for the Western “Unforgiven” (1992, which earned him Oscar, Golden Globe and British Academy Nominations, and Wins from L.A. Film Critics and National Society of Film Critics Awards) and his wife and frequent Collaborator, Janet. They expanded “La Jette” to feature length, making a film that was bold in its Smallness into something truly Epic but, surprisingly, “Twelve Monkeys,” even with all that was added, is faithful to the original in most ways; it deviates significantly from the original plot only by substituting the original’s Nuclear War for a Bio-Terror Attack and leaving out the trip to the second, even Farther Future. Tonally though, “Twelve Monkeys” is radically different, the original’s Slideshow conceit forced the film to be Contemplative, like a Lecture, reinforced by the Narration frequently silencing itself, and the Audience is presented with a series of still images before the story chooses to more forward again; Director Gilliam’s vision was, as usual, Hyper-Kinetic.

 

“Twelve Monkeys” opens in 2035 where Humanity has been forced Underground because of an Apocalyptic Plague that devastated the Earth in the (then-Future) 1996. James Cole (Bruce Willis) is the Prisoner forced to engage in Time Travel Experiments, the goal of which is to capture the Virus in its earliest and purest form, presumably the best way to develop a Vaccine so that the Human Race can finally reclaim the surface of the Earth. James suffers from the same premonitions that the Hero of the first film did and, though unstated, I suspect the Future Authoritarians chose him for this Mission because of his Dreams. They are Villainous, but their only Goal is to Save the World, and they may know that James, and only James, will keep the Loop neatly closed. (There are several of these Authoritarian Characters, but Actress Carol Florence stands out.)  

 

As Time Travel is a new and uncertain Technology, the film drops James in multiple Time Periods, the starting-point is 2035 (USA city of Philadelphia), then sometime during WWI (between 1914-1918, somewhere in Europe), 1990 (Philadelphia again), and finally 1996 (USA city of Baltimore, requiring him to get back to Philadelphia). James’ only clue for what he’s looking for is Graffiti he’s seen in his own desolate World; it announced the rise of the “Army of the 12 Monkeys” and its appearance corresponded with the End of the World.

 

During his visit to 1990, James, already a Victim of Institutional Abuse, Mind-Scrambled from the Time Trip, and unable to talk about the coming Apocalypse without babbling, gets locked in a Psyche-Ward almost as bad as the Dystopian Hell he started out in. His Doctors use phrase “Cassandra Complex” to describe James’ apparent Delusions, and it’s use here is slightly, but cleverly, inaccurate. The “Cassandra Syndrome” in Psychology concerns the Anguish one feels when their perspective is ignored, and often applied to the feeling a person’s suffering inflicted by a partner who displays Neurodivergent Symptoms, like Autism. The Cassanda Complex isn’t a term is Psychology, but like the Syndrome, it reflects the Metaphor of the Greek Myth of Cassandra, who suffered Anguish because she could foretell the Future but no one listened to her. In this film James, the Cassandra, holds Beliefs that are treated by Doctors as a Delusion, but the plot says there’s no Delusion, so those who see the Complex as a Delusion of the Neurodivergent are wrong, making James is the only Neurotypical person in the crowd, and this is driving him Crazy, which the Syndrome often does. This is an ongoing game in the story, James should be an Unreliable Narrator, but he’s not, yet even telling the Truth, he’s underinformed, unprepared, and doubts his Sanity almost as much as everyone else does.

 

Gilliam described the tale as one of "death and resurrection, romance and madness, nostalgia and decay." In addition to being a Cassandra-figure, James has been described as a Christ-Figure by many Critics (James Cole’s initials are J.C, just like Jesus Christ, and James suffers terrible Persecutions while on a Mission to Redeem Mankind). Gilliam also said the film was "very much about the twentieth century's inundation of information and about deciphering what among all this noise and imagery is useful and important to our lives … these themes are expressed in conflicts between the protagonist and antagonistic elements in the relative 'past' and 'future.’” Elsewhere he stated, “Cole has been thrust from another world into ours and he's confronted by the confusion we live in, which most people somehow accept as normal. So, he appears abnormal, and what's happening around him seems random and weird. Is he mad, or are we?”

 

The trip to the wrong year of 1990 proves weirdly fortuitous because of two people he meets: Kathryn Railly (Madeline Stowe) a compassionate Psychiatrist, and a fellow inmate far Loonier than he, Jeffery Goines (Brad Pitt), who just happens to the son of a powerful Corporate Tycoon and Virologist, Dr. Leland Goines (Christopher Plummer). With Jeffery’s help, James escapes the Psyche Ward, but James becomes convinced that Jeffery’s Radical Group, that’s right, Jeffery leads the Army of the 12 Monkeys, is responsible for the Plague. James escapes back into the Future of 2035, so he can be sent back again, this time to 1996.

 

Something the film glosses over, but isn’t really a Plot-Hole, is why James doesn’t try to change the Future from the 1990 standpoint. As any avid SF reader will tell you, Paradoxes are the Road to Hell: What happens if you go back in time and kill your own father? It’s probably better to use knowledge from the Past to fix the Future in the Future than do something more obvious-seeming like, “Let’s kill Hitler” in 1894, when Adolf Hitler was still an Innocent child and was saved from drowning by a Heroic Priest (and yes, that actually happened in the Real World). This is the key narrative link between “La Jette” and “Twelve Monkeys,” no one is trying to stop the Apocalypse, that’s so complicated it is presumed Impossible, they just want the tools to recover from it.

 

So, James returns to 1996, meets Kathryn again, and he lands out Kidnapping her. Here we get into stuff that makes the Direction and the Cast magical, because much of what follows is Logical only if you surrender to the mostly un-stated Determinism that drives the plot of both films. Trying to put that in an Expository Dialogue would’ve sounded stupid so we get to watch people surrender to Fate who should’ve known better. Though Kathryn is Compassionate, she also an Experienced Professional, and she has seen men like James before; there is no reason for her to believe in James’ apparent Delusions, and she does resist those Delusions at first, but when thin shreds of Evidence are provided (a photo of a guy who looks like James during World War I and ballistic evidence that a bullet pulled from James’ leg was from that era) she surrenders; but that evidence is way too thin. Still, with only a few hiccups, a Relationship and Trust develop between James and Kathryn, and they go hand-in-hand to Challenge Destiny completely unarmed.

 

Also, who wouldn’t fall for Actor Willis in a 1995 movie? He’s bruised, often drooling, Victimized, so evoking poignant Sympathy, but he’s even buffer in this film than he was in “Die Hard” (1988), plus, even Deranged, he’s Charming. Actress Stowe is asked to do the most by the script, convince us that a Rational woman would fall in Love this way, but we all know some women do, and she convinces us she’s one of them. The developing Relationship between James and Kathryn holds the story together better than the mechanics of the plot, and the mechanics of the plot are very good.

 

Most Dramas are Triangles, often a Romantic Triangles, but that’s not the Triangle that unfolds here. James is one point, Kathryn the second, and loony Jeffery is the third. But Jeffery barely interacts with Kathryn, Jeffery is James’ Dangerous Mission, Kathryn is everything James has been denied all his life and his apparent Path Out of Hell. As good as Willis and Stowe are, Actor Pitt especially shines as Jeffery and received one of this film’s two Oscar Nominations (the other was Julie Weiss for Best Costume Design). At first glance, he is wholly Untrustworthy, but bizarrely Magnetic, one can totally see him leading a group of Dangerous Radicals. One of his followers says of him, "He's seriously crazy," and it was meant as a sincere compliment.

 

Another notable Performance is David Morse as Dr. Peters. Morse has a special gift for playing quiet, unassuming, Characters who should fade into the background, but if Morse is in the scene, somehow all eyes remain on him. He is in only a few scenes, is importance is unknown until the end, and then he turns out to be the lynch-pin of the plot.

 

The film’s Determinism is underlined in a number of ways. There’s a scene where James and Kathryn hide out in a movie theater playing Director Alfred Hitchcock’s “Vertigo” (1958), specifically the scene that hints at Time-Travel even though that film had no SF or Fantasy elements. Later, the two Characters all-but replay that key scene and the same music on the soundtrack. It also evokes a scene from “La Jette” when the Hero and the woman he falls in Love with (Hélène Châtelain) visit a Museum and feel the weight of Inexorable Time.

 

The visuals evoke Inexorable Time constantly, no matter what year a specific scene plays out in, there’s almost no Modernist-or-later Architecture, so every single year seemed weighted down by the past. Gilliam turned to Veteran Set Decorator Crispian Sallis with the mission of making the Future of 2035 crammed with "found articles" from the pre-Apocalypse past. Sallis scouring flea markets and salvage warehouses and returned with items from, or reflecting, the Renaissance, the Victorian Age, WWI & WWII, the 1950s and 1970s.

 

Even though 2035 included some technology that doesn’t exist yet, it looks old, a Steam Punk Aesthetic that Gilliam indulged before in the movie “Brazil” (1985). Especially notable was an Interrogation scene (during production it was called the “Chimney Scene” because it was filmed in a gigantic chimney in an Abandoned Power Plant) wherein James is confronted by a scary, spherical Robot made of 15 glowing TV monitors. Gilliam, “I love the idea of being interrogated in a room with all this technology between you and the interrogator. It's that nightmarish intervention of technology. You try to see the faces on the screens in front of you, but the real faces and voices are down there and you have these tinny voices in your ear. To me that's the world we live in, the way we communicate these days, through technical devices that pretend to be about communication but may not be.” It was inspired by a sketch by Conceptual Architect Lebbeus Woods, whom Gilliam described as "a visionary who does these great drawings of impossible architecture. His work was a big influence on the look of the film's futuristic sequences." But, perhaps, the Filmmakers borrowed too much, because it resulted in a Law Suit.

 

This was Director Gilliam’s seventh feature, starting with his co-Directing (with Terry Jones) “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” (1975), and his career has been a bumpy road. He was bruised and battered by battles with Universal Studios over the release of “Brazil,” which earned him huge cred with the Critics, but then Bombed. He was unfairly vilified for wild-overspending on “The Adventures of Baron Munchausen” (1988), then working with different Production Houses, Distributors, and an Executive Producer promised him more money than there really was, so of course it went over-budget (Gilliam insists he was promised $35 million, but there was only $23.5, and he insists he pulled it off for less-than $40 million, but he’s accused of spending $46.6), and then it Bombed, even though it was lavishly praised. Somehow, with this film, he was back with Universal who so mistreated him in the past, but apparently, he outlived the Old Generation in the Studio, and was treated better by the New Generation of Leadership. "The irony was too great for me to pass up. It seems to be very difficult to burn bridges in Hollywood." And in a separate interview, Gilliam said it was "the easiest go with a studio I've ever had … Amazingly, I have nothing to complain about."

 

There deep parallels between this film and “Brazil,” which was Written by Gilliam in collaboration with Tom Stoppard and Charles McKeown. We have an uncertainty regarding what is Real (a theme in all of Gilliam’s films), confusion regarding what constitutes Criminality and Innocence, untrustworthy friends, and Dreams leading us to Destiny, also Dreams leading us astray, and really, the Dreams doing both at the same time.  All of Gilliam’s work ave flashes of the warmly humorous, but at least half of them are deeply Misanthropic as well, with “Brazil” and “Twelve Monkeys” being he’s darkest films-to-date. Poor James comes from a Future Dystopia, much of what he sees in the Present feels Dystopian, and finally he’s compelled to say, “Maybe the human race deserves to be wiped out.”

 

Gilliam was committed to keeping the film on-budget, and not only succeeded (here he was promised $29 million, so less than he was promised for “The Adventures of …” but more than what the money really was), and delivered a Hit ($168.8 million). Still. The money was tight given the A-list cast, short-shooting schedules, and extensive location footage. It was filmed not only in fore-mentioned Philadelphia and Baltimore, but three other USA cities and Canada, and mostly those locations were miserably run-down, caked with geological layers of pigeon poop, questionable Asbestos clearance, and a lot of rotten weather. Production Designer Jeffrey Beecroft, "It was a tough shoot … There wasn't a lot of money or enough time. Terry is a perfectionist, but he was really adamant about not going over budget. He got crucified for 'Munchausen,' and that still haunts him."

 

Gilliam again, “If I have any regret about the shoot, it's that we didn't quite capture all of the power stations on film. We had to limit ourselves to what was important for the story. I hate going into extraordinary spaces and not taking full advantage of them, but to do so might have distracted from the tale we were trying to tell." And in a different interview, “We went to Philadelphia and Baltimore because the script named them. Philadelphia has an amazing mixture of architecture, nice nineteenth-century stuff and 20s power stations which are now disused. A series of civilisations lived and died there. The City Hall is this wonderful Beaux Arts building which we used as a centrepiece for the above-ground future. I've always used architecture as if it was a character, so it seemed to me this trifurcated room was right for multiple personalities. In three ways it extended to infinity - or escape into the future - and which one do you choose? If I want to use that room, I find a way of justifying it, that's the way I make movies.”

 

Seemingly, but not really, contradicting Gilliam’s reputation as a “perfectionist” was that he’s mostly abandoned Story-Boarding. Director Hitchcock, and Hitchcock’s greatest living student, Director Steven Spielberg, obsessively Story-Board, a key reason why they created such extraordinary and complex visuals while generally completing their shoots on-time. But Gilliam stated, "As a former animator, I've done my share of storyboards, but I've gotten more and more away from them … On this picture, I did hardly any at all. It's interesting to see if you can do things instinctively — to go to a location and see what's there on that day. Sometimes, when you preconceive things and think about them for three or four months, you get yourself into a trap. Of course, there are always some complex shots you need to plan out well in advance, but the danger is that you've spent so much time seeing them that you can become bored by the time you're ready to do them. Then again, quite often you may deviate from your plan at the last minute, only to realize, after you've cut it all together, that the original idea was the right choice after all!" Also, Gilliam is a huge fan of Jazz music, and like a Jazz Musician, he’s rigorously Disciplined, but uses that Discipline to unleash Improvisation when the time comes down to actually doing it. (Notably, Hitchcock earned his Rep in the USA (he came here in 1939) by using location footage more than most of his Contemporaries, but by the time he got to “Vertigo” he’d almost completely abandoned location shooting in favor of greater control).

 

Gilliam seems to have a gift to keep others on-board with him, "It's my job to be Mr. Enthusiasm and fool everyone into believing it's all great fun, so they'll do better work … I hate making movies … O.K., I love it, but it's a miserable experience … It's frustrating. I get very irritated when it isn't clear to everybody else what we should be doing when it's clear to me."

 

Those who work with him, generally praise him. One of the best elements of the film is the Cinematography by Roger Pratt, whose working relationship with Gilliam goes back to “Monty Python and …” Pratt responded to Gilliam's love of Architecture and vertical lines, and when with Gilliam, Pratt consistently chose to shot in the 1.85:1 format rather than Anamorphic, which helped much in the Dutch Angles that Gilliam is famous for. "That strategy was particularly effective in the chimney cell sequence. Dutch angles can often be annoying or noticeable, but Craig [Camera Operator Craig Haagensen, also a Cinematographer] was very clever in making them organic to the entire picture. We also used wide angles throughout the picture, but Terry frequently shoots close-ups on a 17mm lens, so our use of wide angles doesn't stick out as much as it might in a normal film, where you'd be shooting close-ups on a 70mm lens. Terry is not in the business of doing those kinds of glamour shots. Our primary range on this picture was from 10mm to 17mm! We very rarely put the 5:1 zoom on the camera, and I don't think we used anything longer than a 100mm lens. Basically, the wide angles we used were all part of the general thrust of the film. It's a difficult look to maintain, but I think Terry and I have done well with it so far. Long lenses can be easier to use, but once you're into the wide angles, it can be difficult to break from that mode."

 

Full disclosure: I only understood about a third of what was stated in the above paragraph.

Gilliam admits he makes things hard on his Cinematographers and Camera Operators, "I think it's just the way I am; being an ex-cartoonist, I see things in a slightly grotesque way, and wider lenses tend to capture that viewpoint. I like the distorting effect, and I like the way a wide lens bends architecture and forces perspectives; things look deeper, and the scale of things is altered. I also like what it does to people. 

 

"My visual fetishes do make things a bit hard on Roger and the crew … If you're shooting with long lenses, as most people do, you can put lights anywhere. Because Roger and I have worked together since “Brazil,” he's gotten very good at hiding his lights; I probably take him for granted now. It's also much easier to create a composition with long lenses, because everything is on one plane; anything you're not interested in stays out of focus. It's simpler to work that way, but I have an obsession with wide-angle lenses. We always work as wide as possible, but at the same time I don't want it to look as if we're using wide-angle lenses. So, it becomes a kind of game, to see how far you can go without alienating the audience. To me, using a wide lens creates more of a feeling that you're in the film than a long lens does. The whole scenario is around you when you look through the camera." In a separate interview, Gilliam spoke of his pursuit of a boldness in his imagery, "When I was a kid, I watched all of these epic films that took me to other places and other times. That's really what it's all about. I keep wondering why I keep making life difficult for myself, but I can't seem to help it. I need to find a challenge, to try to do something that I haven't seen before.”

 

Gilliam admitted some trepidation in casting Actor Willis, “I had never been a great fan of Bruce's before … [but his] performance is very contained, very internalized; there's nothing flash about it.” And in a separate interview, “I told him, ‘I don't want Bruce Willis the superstar around this film, but Bruce Willis the actor. You've got to come here like a monk. You've got to be naked in every sense and you've got to make yourself vulnerable. You've got to trust me - and you can't direct the film.’" Actor Willis had good things to say about Gilliam, "Terry is an actor's director who invites collaboration … I've done stuff that I've never gotten a chance to do on screen. I had a ball."

 

Because of the film’s huge success there was a TV spin-off, “12 Monkeys” (first aired 2015, and I haven’t seen it). There was reason to be dubious of it, it was originally supposed to be a different and unrelated SF Time Travel series, but after the initial pitch, was re-written for this Franchise (that happens more often than you think, the early script of “I, Robot” (2004) had nothing to do with the Author Issac Asimov stories and novels it claimed to be adapting). It had a completely different cast, and was set in different locations, and Gilliam and the original Script-Writers were not involved. Gillian expressed was a doubt before it was aired (I have no idea if he watched the finished product). On the other hand, it did last two seasons, and did receive better reviews the closer it got to its cancelation.

 

Trailer:

12 Monkeys Official Trailer #1 - Bruce Willis, Brad Pitt Movie (1995) HD