In the ‘Twelve Monkeys’ pandemic, there are no solutions

By Jake Skubish

Time travel movies are compelling because they indulge the essential human fantasy: what if we could change the things that have gone wrong in the past? The journeys in these films allow characters to manipulate the past, for better or worse, and teach them a lesson they can carry back to the present. But Terry Gilliam’s time-bending Twelve Monkeys, which celebrates its 25th anniversary this year, asks a different question: what if we can’t do anything about the past at all?

Present day in Twelve Monkeys is the year 2035, and humanity has been living underground ever since a viral pandemic wiped out 5 billion people in 1996. James Cole (Bruce Willis) is a prisoner in this subterranean society and is tasked with traveling back in time, first to 1990 and then to 1996, to determine how the virus first spread and find evidence for a cure.

From the very beginning James is under no pretense that this expedition can undo the pandemic. Condescendingly asked in 1990 at a mental institution whether he has come back to save them, James replies, “How can I save you? This already happened. I can’t save you. Nobody can.” Willis’ performance as James is reflective of the trauma jumping across time has wrought on his brain, swinging from this melancholic resignation to fits of rage, confusion, and tenderness. We don’t appreciate him enough as an actor with true range.

Most of the doctors dismiss James as crazy, but Kathryn Railly (Madeleine Stowe), a psychiatrist at the institution, takes an interest—she can’t shake the feeling that she has met him before. Eventually she comes to believe he is telling the truth and joins him on a last-ditch effort to find out how it all began.

If there’s any visual evidence for the futility of this mission it can be found in Gilliam’s signature style. The worlds of 1996 and 2035 are visually congruent: everything is grotesque, cavernous, and a little bit dirty. Gilliam’s tilted lenses are unsettling and make humanity as ugly on the outside as it seems to be on the inside. Pre- and post-pandemic, these may not be a people worth saving.

The film’s title comes from the Army of the Twelve Monkeys, a radical organization run by Jeffrey Goines (Brad Pitt), the son of a renowned virologist. James suspects the Army was behind the virus (their spray paint tags reading “WE DID IT” seem like a dead giveaway), but the group turns out to be a devilish MacGuffin. At one point James talks back to an advertisement on the radio, and Kathryn tells him, “It’s an advertisement. It’s not really a special message to you.” The same can be said of the evidence pointing James toward the Army of the Twelve Monkeys: we don’t control the world around us, and it’s not really about us at all.

Depressing? Yes. Twelve Monkeys is a nihilistic affair. But the coherence of Gilliam’s vision makes his film a visceral, engaging experience nonetheless. This remains true even though the “reveal” of Twelve Monkeys is apparent from the very beginning. We witness a crucial moment in the planet’s demise, we are told throughout the whole film it can’t be undone, and then we return back to that moment, wishing the whole time against what we already know to be true.

I think what I appreciate most about writer David Peoples’ screenplay is the way in which it refuses to offer viewers a moral lesson as a means of escape from the bleakness of the story.  There is nothing to learn from the past, nor a cynical condemnation of humankind, nor a redemptive look toward the future. Twelve Monkeys makes life out to be mysterious, absurd, and probably meaningless. It’s dour but uncompromising, and the insanity of the film’s characters always keep things lively, if not upbeat.

The film’s most enrapturing moment comes near the end, when James and Kathryn don disguises while in a movie theater screening Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo. The two films, in both tone and content, perfectly mirror one another; James remarks “I think I’ve seen this movie before” as Jimmy Stewart asks Kim Novak on screen “Have you been here before?” James then makes the point that his hazy memory of Vertigo is just like his time-traveling situation. “The movie never changes, it can’t change, but every time you see it it seems different because you’re different.”

Kathryn puts a disguise on James as she replies, “If you can’t change anything because it’s already happened, you may as well smell the flowers.” The tragedy of Twelve Monkeys is that she’s right, of course, but so is he—if they could recognize the futility of their pursuit they might find peace in stopping to smell the flowers, but even though the past can’t change, they’ll always feels as if it can.

We’ve already witnessed the Twelve Monkeys finale at the beginning of the film, but at the end we get a smile from Kathryn that hints at the recognition of that futility. “I feel like I’ve always known you,” she tells James later in the Vertigo scene. And with the magnificent, tragic ending of Twelve Monkeys, it seems she may always have, and always will.