Classic Horrors Club

Time travel movies sometimes raise the question if the person who claims to have travelled is instead suffering some type of mental breakdown. In these cases, we, the audience, usually know the truth. In 12 Monkeys (1995), though, I was not convinced that James Cole (Bruce Willis) wasn’t in the middle of his own delusion. That’s just one of the elements that separates this film from most other time travel adventures.

In the near future (exact date unknown, but close enough that adult James would have been a child grown up in 1996), 5 billion people have died from a deadly virus that appeared in 1997. The opening title card tells us this and that the survivors abandoned the surface of the planet and animals would once again rule the world. Cole has been sent to the surface to gather information.

While there, he has an encounter with a bear, hears Christmas music in the remains of a department store, and spots a lion on the roof of an adjacent building. Then, when he supposedly travels back to 1996, there’s a stuffed bear on the street, employees are hanging Christmas decorations in the store, and there’s a lion statue on the roof. It’s easy to believe he’s actually living in 1996 and having distorted visions about an apocalyptic future.

At one point, he even admits that what he’s experiencing isn’t real and he’s having a breakdown. It’s no wonder, because there’s more to the circumstances and they’re understandably confusing if you’re not paying attention to what you’re watching and hearing. For example, in 1996, there’s a phone number to call and leave a voicemail. The messages are monitored in the future where scientists can send other people to the same place, date, and time so that it seems immediate to the person in the past.

The implications are that if you travelled back to the past, you’re constantly being monitored from the future and are perhaps being manipulated for nefarious reasons. The people surrounding you could be spies from another time and you might encounter them in two different times. Add paranoia to the mental breakdowns and delusions and there’s another clue that all might not be right with Cole. I had not seen 12 Monkeys since it was released, but I remembered the truth.

If you’re watching it for the first time, you may identify with the psychiatrist charged to care for Cole, Kathryn Railly (Madeleine Stowe.) She’s definitely team-nut job until she pulls a bullet from World War I out of his leg and she reverses course. This is about the time Cole stops believing, so Railly tries to convince him that he’s not crazy. You see, if time travel is real, it’s not an exact science. You could accidentally be sent to the wrong time, say 1990 instead of 1996, during the first attempt.

Then when you’re sent to an institution to be examined. you may meet Jeffrey Goins (Brad Pitt), whose state of mind is not in question. Here it gets really complex. Cole arrives looking for the Army of the 12 Monkeys, not to stop the deadly virus, but to learn more about how it happened. Any knowledge he shares from the future many years ahead about a future six years ahead, could inadvertently be the cause of the whole thing.

12 Monkeys is as either straight forward or complicated as you want it to be. It’s not actually confusing, though. No one should have a difficult time following the story. It helps that the actors are so good, especially Pitt, who earned an Oscar nomination for his performance. It’s got just as much strangeness as any other Terry Gilliam movie to make it quirky, yet doesn’t rely on it as heavily as it does in other films from the director.

It holds up well nearly 30 years after it was released. In part, it’s because we’re watching a movie about a future that’s in our past. On one hand, that might reduce the urgency of the film. On the other hand, we survived an actual pandemic, so in 2024, 12 Monkeys is a little closer to science-fact than science-fiction. If nothing else, it may cause us to pay more attention to what’s happening around us right now and the clues that could indicate where we’re headed.