Film review by Kevin Patterson
TWELVE MONKEYS Rating: ***1/2 (out of four) R, 1994 Directed by Terry Gilliam. Written by David and Janet Peoples. Starring Bruce Willis, Madeline Stowe, Brad Pitt.
"5 billion people will die from a deadly virus in 1997. The survivors will abandon the surface of the planet. Once again the animals will rule the world . . ." -Excerpts from interview with clinically diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic, April 12, 1990 - Baltimore County Hospital
With this caption begins TWELVE MONKEYS, the most recent of director Terry Gilliam's many excursions into the realm where reality and fantasy often seem to intersect, overlap, and sometimes collide head-first. This time, the vehicle for his protagonist's confusion is time travel. The year is 2035 and the last of the human race have been driven underground by a dangerous plague unleashed, apparently, by a terrorist group known as the Army of the Twelve Monkeys. Seeking to develop an inoculation and reclaim the surface, a group of scientists decide to send a prisoner named James Cole (Bruce Willis) back to the year 1996 in order to collect samples of the virus in its original, un-mutated form from before it was released on the population.
The script was penned by David Peoples (of BLADE RUNNER fame) and his wife Janet, and with the help of Gilliam (BRAZIL, THE FISHER KING), one of the most accomplished fantasy directors in modern cinema, they take the issue of time travel and explore it, far-fetched as it may seem, in an intelligent and thoughtful manner. One avenue that the script takes is to examine the practical uses of time travel and the problems that time travelers might encounter. The famous physicist Stephen Hawking once commented that time travel will probably never be invented for the reason that we, in the present day, are not being visited by time travelers from the future. After seeing TWELVE MONKEYS, I found myself speculating that if we were, they might all be locked away in mental institutions, for this is Cole's fate on his first journey to the past. TWELVE MONKEYS also follows a different route than the usual return-to-the-past-to-change-the-present routine that is common to science fiction movies (and often results in a story riddled with paradoxes). Cole is not trying to avert the spread of the virus, and he even says as much when he confronts the man who he believes is responsible for its release: all he is trying to find is a sample.
TWELVE MONKEYS is divided neatly into three acts. In the first, Cole is mistakenly sent to Baltimore in 1990 instead of 1996, where he is immediately taken into police custody and diagnosed as delusional by Dr. Katherine Railly (Madeline Stowe). The resulting scenes at the mental institution, in which a hyperactive patient named Jeffrey Goines (Brad Pitt) constantly stirs up trouble and seems to allude vaguely to the impending disaster, are at once amusing and eerie, capturing Cole's strange experience of being immersed in human civilization at a time that he knows is only six years before its destruction.
He is subsequently recalled to 2035, where he explains the malfunction to the scientists, who, this time, manage to send him to 1996 as planned. Desperate to complete his mission, he seeks help from Dr. Railly, who now works in Philadelphia; although she is frightened by him at first and tries to convince him that he is still "mentally divergent," she gradually begins to trust him after some of his predictions about the future seem to come true. These scenes are marked by a sort of innocent abandon on the part of Cole, who, for the first time since his childhood, finds himself able to enjoy things like music, open air, and streams in the forest.
In the final act, after another recall to the future, Cole returns once again to 1996 Philadelphia, this time only three weeks before the unleashing of the virus. Once again, he seeks out Railly, who is now beginning to believe his story (just as he himself is beginning to think that he may be delusional after all), as the two of them realize the trust and attraction that had been growing between them and begin to wonder if the disaster really is just around the corner and whether or not the Army of the Twelve Monkeys are the real culprits. Meanwhile, Cole ponders the meaning of a recurring dream which echoes an experience from his childhood, in which he sees a man shot by an airport security guard as a woman calls after him. It's never clear exactly what is coming next in TWELVE MONKEYS, but the twists in plot and character, however intricate and complex, never seem contrived or phony: the script flows naturally, especially for a fantasy film, and the way in which Cole's dream finally fits into the big picture is both logical and quite poignant.
Gilliam's vision of both present and future is about as bleak as they come. What we see of human society in 2035 seems devoid of any vitality and is instead surviving by nothing more than a sort of plodding inertia under a vaguely authoritarian structure (the scientists "volunteer" Cole for their experiments against his will, and among his criminal charges are violations of the "Permanent Emergency Code"). The present doesn't fare much better, from the dilapidated, chaotic Baltimore mental hospital to urban Philadelphia, where Cole and Railly encounter violent thugs in abandoned buildings, countless homeless people inhabiting the run-down streets, walls covered with graffiti, and a strange man who assaults them and claims that their hotel room is his "territory." One gets the feeling that, had a lethal virus not been unleashed into this society three weeks later, it might have eaten itself alive in a few more years anyway.
Still, TWELVE MONKEYS does not insist on fear and despair to the exclusion of everything else: even in the face of the present and future (or, from his view, past and present) horrors he has witnessed, Cole's enjoyment of the simple things like the open air or a pleasant song on the radio is honest and genuinely innocent. One of the best scenes comes near the end, when, for a reason I won't reveal here, a group of wild animals escape the zoo and run across buildings and freeways: it's sort of like the last gasp of humor and amusement before the impending onslaught of the virus. Aside from general fear and confusion, this is probably the most pervasive emotional motif in the film: the beauty of these simple things, even in the face of pervasive insanity and destruction. Perhaps the strongest testimony to this is that towards the end, Cole actually begins to hope that he is delusional, because he and Railly might have a future together in this world and in the absence of the virus.
If there's anything wrong with TWELVE MONKEYS, it's that it tries to do a few too many things at once. The question of how society decides someone is insane is raised several times, but Gilliam and the screenwriters seem to have forgotten about it by the end: nowhere in the last half hour or so is it even acknowledged. Similarly, the way the script leaves it ambiguous as to whether or not the film's events are real or are taking place in Cole's imagination amounts to little more than a distraction. The film would have worked perfectly well as a drama with a science fiction backdrop without introducing the possibility of an unreliable first-person viewpoint. Gilliam is a talented director, but even he seems to find his hands full when trying to do science fiction, drama, mystery, romance, and satire all at once.
Whatever its minor flaws, the film is sophisticated and poignant and surely deserves to be remembered as a science fiction classic - no less than what one would expect when the creative minds behind BRAZIL and BLADE RUNNER join forces. I can't quite give it four stars, but I can say this: TWELVE MONKEYS is probably the best 3-1/2 star film I have ever seen.
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