Twelve Monkeys is a 1995 science fiction time travel and conspiracy theory movie directed by former Monty Python member Terry Gilliam and inspired by the short film La Jetée. It deals with problems of time and memory, and features performances by Bruce Willis, Madeleine Stowe and Brad Pitt.

Bruce Willis stars as James Cole, who believes he has been sent to our time from a future in which apocalyptic events (initiated by a group calling itself the Army of the Twelve Monkeys) have killed 99% of humanity and forced the survivors into a bleak subterranean existence; his mission is to study the events leading up to the apocalypse. Alternatively Cole could be just plain insane.

On his arrival back in 1990 (he was meant to be sent to 1996 but sent to 1990 due to the time machine's malfunction), Cole is arrested and institutionalised, whereupon he encounters fellow inmate Jeffrey Goines (Brad Pitt) and also meets Dr Kathryn Railly (Madeleine Stowe), an expert in insanity related to prophecy. Initially Railly diagnoses Cole as delusional, but as events unfold she begins to take him seriously.

Struggling with his own sanity, Cole, assisted by Railly, strives to unravel the mystery of the Army of the Twelve Monkeys. As Railly starts to believe his story, Cole begins to doubt his own knowledge of the future. In the end it transpires that Goines and the Twelve Monkeys were not responsible for the spread of the disease which afflicted mankind but another person altogether.

Trivia

Towards the end of Twelve Monkeys there is a scene set in a movie theater. The film seen playing in the background of these shots is 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 Valdez ("here I was born... and here I died"). As well as obviously resonating with larger themes in Twelve Monkeys, 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 .

Technical data

• writing credits: David Webb Peoples , Janet Peoples
• music: Paul Buckmaster , Tom Waits, Bernard Herrmann (from Hitchcock's Vertigo)
• runtime: 129 minutes
• sound: DTS-Stereo / DTS
• aspect ratio: 1.85 : 1
• release date: January 5, 1996 (USA)
• budget: $29,000,000
• BBFC Certificate: 15
• MPAA rating: R

External links

• An analysis of Twelve Monkeys An interesting analysis on the time travel temporal anomalies by M. Joseph Young.