Twelve Monkeys (1995)
Directed by Terry Gilliam
In the year 2035, convict James Cole reluctantly volunteers to be sent back in time to discover the origin of a deadly virus that wiped out nearly all of the earth's population and forced the survivors into underground communities. But when Cole is mistakenly sent to 1990 instead of 1996, he's arrested and locked up in a mental hospital. There he meets psychiatrist Dr. Kathryn Railly and the son of a famous virus expert who may hold the key to the Army of the 12 Monkeys; thought to be responsible for unleashing the killer disease.
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9 films that influenced Twelve Monkeys
What critics say influenced Twelve Monkeys
The inspiration for Twelve Monkeys, this film involves a stand of human survivors sending a traveller back through time to help save the human race.
Screenplay by David Peoples and Janet Peoples, inspired by the film "La Jetee," written by Chris Marker.
Basing their work on the script for Chris Marker's 1962 short "La Jetee," writers David and Janet Peoples add resonance--if at the cost of too much happenstance--by criss-crossing many of their characters' paths.
Inspired by Chris Marker's classic 1962 experimental short film La Jetée, Twelve Monkeys benefits from the marriage of visionary director Gilliam and two of the smartest screenwriters to work in post-studio-system Hollwyood: David Peoples (Unforgiven, Blade Runner) and Janet Peoples.
Based on Chris Marker's film La Jetee (1962, rel.
The script, based on another film, "La Jetee," written by Chris Marker, David Webb Peoples and Janet Peoples, is very clever, but there are some logical problems.
And when Railly and Cole take refuge in a movie theater that happens to be showing Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo (an important influence on Marker and La Jetee), we're forced to consider suddenly, almost subconsciously, the many interesting ways that film is this film's doppelganger.
The climax of their romantic fervor comes in a movie theater, where the pair don disguises to begin a new, knowingly brief life together as Jimmy Stewart and Kim Novak enact the same tale onscreen in Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo.
Before Terry Gilliam found success in the US with The Fisher King and Twelve Monkeys, he made a series of wondrously inventive fantasies, of which this was one of the best.
The proof arrives in the final scene, which even more than in his affecting "The Fisher King" carries emotional reverberations that are profoundly moving; even as a whole world is tilting like the Titanic in his "Time Bandits," Gilliam's camera remains tight on human faces.
And as a more specific frame of reference, it helps to know that Gilliam's earlier directing efforts were the Orwellian sci-fi cult favorite "Brazil" and the dark time-travel comedy "Time Bandits."
But unlike those other stories, Twelve Monkeys is the creation of auteur Terry Gilliam, the irrepressible fantasist in charge of the similarly temporal shenanigans of Time Bandits, the urban pain and redemption of The Fisher King, and the lobotomized despair of his great suffocating masterpiece, Brazil.
Terry Gilliam ("Monty Python"/"Brazil"/"Time Bandits") directs a remake of Chris Markerâ??s experimental short about time travel called La Jetee (1962).
Like Gilliam's "Jabberwocky," "Time Bandits," "The Adventures of Baron Munchausen" and "The Fisher King," "12 Monkeys" doesn't look much like other movies, which in this era of copycat filmmaking is certainly a blessing.
In fact, until Twelve Monkeys, it was the darkest thing for which Gilliam had been responsible.
12 Monkeys is, at any rate, a pretty good 'un, maybe the most completely effective Gilliam film outside of Brazil , and one of the best early examples of the puzzle-box storytelling that has become so popular in the subsequent decade and a half, in the hand of the Christopher Nolans and Richard Kellys of the world, though only rarely does a film of this style come along where the puzzle, however ingenious and internally coherent, is sort of beside the point: as befits a script written by David Peoples of Blade Runner fame, and his wife Janet, 12 Monkeys uses genre trappings more as a way of investigating psychological issues rather than narrative ones.
And as a more specific frame of reference, it helps to know that Gilliam's earlier directing efforts were the Orwellian sci-fi cult favorite "Brazil" and the dark time-travel comedy "Time Bandits."
Terry Gilliam's ambitious "12 Monkeys" was co-authored by David Peoples , who wrote " Blade Runner ," and it has the same view of the near future as a grunge pit - a view it shares with Gilliam's own " Brazil ."
With the wide-angle support of production designer Jeffrey Beecroft and cinematographer Roger Pratt (who also shot Gilliam's masterwork Brazil), Twelve Monkeys is never less than visually and intellectually stimulating (the interrogation room alone, inspired by the work of Lebbeus Woods, is a stunning vision of the fractured reality created by modern technology).
But unlike those other stories, Twelve Monkeys is the creation of auteur Terry Gilliam, the irrepressible fantasist in charge of the similarly temporal shenanigans of Time Bandits, the urban pain and redemption of The Fisher King, and the lobotomized despair of his great suffocating masterpiece, Brazil.
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Based on a short film called La Jetée , 12 Monkeys is and is sort of a combination between The Fisher King, Brazil and The Terminator. Bruce Willis plays a guy from the future.
Like Gilliam's "Jabberwocky," "Time Bandits," "The Adventures of Baron Munchausen" and "The Fisher King," "12 Monkeys" doesn't look much like other movies, which in this era of copycat filmmaking is certainly a blessing.
The film is reminiscent of Gilliam's earlier films, "Brazil" and "The Fisher King" and Pitt's earlier film "Seven" in which the hero struggles pitifully against a pre-determined fate.
But unlike those other stories, Twelve Monkeys is the creation of auteur Terry Gilliam, the irrepressible fantasist in charge of the similarly temporal shenanigans of Time Bandits, the urban pain and redemption of The Fisher King, and the lobotomized despair of his great suffocating masterpiece, Brazil.
To be able to go with the very eccentric "Twelve Monkeys," one really needs to know up front that it is a film by former Monty Python member Terry Gilliam, who had a big hit four years ago with "The Fisher King" . . .
An intoxicating blend of existential SF and unrequited romance, lands-end images and Dutch angles, the latest from director Terry Gilliam ("The Fisher King") is his first to benefit from a major star playing the lead role.
Director Terry Gilliam was the American member of the British comedy sensation Monty Python and went on to direct the movies Time Bandits, Brazil, The Adventures of Baron Munchausen and The Fisher King.
Like Gilliam's "Jabberwocky," "Time Bandits," "The Adventures of Baron Munchausen" and "The Fisher King," "12 Monkeys" doesn't look much like other movies, which in this era of copycat filmmaking is certainly a blessing.
As I get older, I appreciate Gilliam's library less (three exceptions: Twelve Monkeys, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Tideland ); even the seemingly unshakeable Brazil now seems cluttered, unfocused, self-indulgent, and puerile.
The whole affair hammered a nail into the foot of Gilliam's directing career, and despite subsequent successes such as The Fisher King (1991) and Twelve Monkeys (1995), the over-publicized Munchausen experience was so traumatizing that it bronzed Gilliam's reputation for being "difficult."
Like Gilliam's "Jabberwocky," "Time Bandits," "The Adventures of Baron Munchausen" and "The Fisher King," "12 Monkeys" doesn't look much like other movies, which in this era of copycat filmmaking is certainly a blessing.
Director Terry Gilliam was the American member of the British comedy sensation Monty Python and went on to direct the movies Time Bandits, Brazil, The Adventures of Baron Munchausen and The Fisher King.
His style is best described as antique-futuristic (perhaps one reason that his weakest film, The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, fell flat; it was just antique).
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Other time travel films, such as the "Back to the Future" series, and "Grand Tour: Disaster in Time" take another view, that multiple futures (time lines) are possible.