by Stacey Osbeck

Before the 1996 film came out the teaser posters appeared everywhere. A scarlet illustration of monkeys walking in the circle of a clock face, one for each hour. Framing the one large screeching primate out front were the words:12 Monkeys. Below simply: ‘They’re Coming’. There were no smart phones or Google then so people asked everyone they knew ‘Have you seen the posters in red? What are the 12 Monkeys? Is it a movie? Is it a movement?’ We didn’t know. All we knew was that they were coming.  

Generally, movie posters announce it’s for a film, followed by who’s in it, the genre and not just that it’s coming, but a release date. 12 Monkeys’ marketing kept things vague, leaving us intrigued. So while most flicks have roughly two hours to set up and sustain the driving question, this film utilized months to build momentum before we even sat down in the darkened theater and the picture began. It’s still one of my all time favorite movie experiences.  

The end of days begins in Philadelphia. In 1996, a deadly virus starts in Philly and spreads across the whole world. Attempts at a vaccine prove futile as the virus keeps mutating, spreading faster, making it difficult to inoculate people against all the new variants. No country sits untouched. To survive, humans across the globe go into lockdown. By 2035, the survivors live beneath the surface of the Earth. 12 Monkeys was released 25 years ago in January of 1996. A simpler time when all this was still just the stuff of science fiction.  

James Cole (Bruce Willis) is sent from the present, 2035, to gather information in 1996. The scientists want to know more about the virus and the Army of the 12 Monkeys, who they believe released it. Cole promptly finds himself committed to a mental institution under the care of Dr. Kathryn Railly (Madeleine Stowe). At the asylum, Cole meets Jeffrey Goines (Brad Pitt). Jeffrey’s not only nuts, he’s nuts in a Terry Gilliam film (Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, The Fisher King) so naturally he’s full fledged bananas. Even in this deranged state he offers a significant insight: a population deciding what’s crazy and what’s not determines who’s locked up and who gets to walk free. That sanity is majority rule. 

Curiously, a panel of shrinks care less about Cole’s delusions of a virus and more about him referencing 1996 and 1997 as the past.  “We’re not in the present now, Mr. Cole?”  His inability to properly place himself in time appears an important factor in determining he should stay locked up.   

Just a few days ago in Walgreens, I came upon a fully stocked aisle of Valentine’s Day chocolate.  I thought they’ve really got a great selection for this time of year.  I kept checking the prices and was shocked.  How could they have not marked down old holiday chocolate?  I mean, March just passed and this candy is for Valentine’s Day.  Then it hit me.  March didn’t just pass.  March was when lockdown started.  Even though it feels as though life stood still, time kept going.  We’ve almost done a full circle around the sun.  It’s now January.  The present year is 2021.  Valentine’s Day is in the near future not the recent past.   

Many people told me something similar has happened to them.  ‘Can’t wait for summer.  Oh, we had summer already, we just weren’t allowed to go to the beaches.’  ‘Looking forward to Thanksgiving dinner.  Hold on, that’s long gone, we just didn’t do anything or see each together.’  Now everyone gets confused where they are in time.  And everyone reassures each other that it’s ok and it’s normal.  Like Brad Pitt’s character said sanity is majority rule.   

Cole kidnaps Kathryn forcing her to drive him to Philadelphia so he can track the origins of the virus.  She tries to talk him down and help him recognize he’s not tapped into reality.  He doesn’t waver in his conviction that the coming pandemic is real.   

Both are either sane or mentally unfit when we look at who has what information and from which vantage point.  She would be crazy to believe him.  He would be a fool to not try and complete his mission.   

However, past the midpoint their perspectives change and there’s a flip.  Kathryn gives credence to everything he says about time travel and the virus.  Cole insists she was right all along.  He’s sick and needs help.  That all he wants is to be here in the present with her.  The difference is she truly believes, whereby Cole postures to win her favor and also shed his old life and try to grow into a new, better one.   

The two lay low in an old movie house playing Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo.  Cole, who has spent most of his life underground, has seen this film before when he was a little boy.  He remarks that the movie never changes.  It can’t change.  But every time you see it, it seems different because you’re different.   

On that same note, new things jumped out at me in 2021 that didn’t strike me in the 90s.  The film hasn’t change, but the world has, I have.   

On initial watching, I felt more grounded with Cole.  He’s the hero of this story.  He’s from the future which is cool and who couldn’t feel for a tragic Cassandra figure, someone with insight to stop horrible events, but left with no one believing them.  This time I paid more attention to Kathryn.  Somehow, she seems to represent us, beautiful innocent us, from the not too distant past.  On first watching I wanted her to believe Cole.  In 2021, I felt more protective of Kathryn and instead wanted her to enjoy those last good days, carefree, disbelieving, since the inevitable would come all the same.   

In the 90s I was a kid in suburbia.  Now from an urban perspective I see this film did a great job of contrasting the polar ends of the path to mental illness. Kathryn’s experience with madness is clinical, psychosis that has come to full fruition.  When Cole kidnaps her and drags her through a squalid section of Philly she’s exposed to the real world makings of mental illness: people without support systems, poverty, destitution, drugs, hopelessness.  In the gutter she gets the grand tour of how the seeds of mania are often planted.   

The last thing I picked up this time was a dialogue gap that once I saw it changed my whole perspective.  Jose (Jon Seda), a fellow time traveler sent by the scientists, hands Cole a gun at the final scene in the airport.  Cole feels resigned to take it and says this last part isn’t about the future this is about following orders.  Cole keeps asking who am I supposed to shoot, who am I supposed to shoot?  Kathryn runs up, telling him the man who’s going to release the virus is here, they have to stop him.  So I figure that’s who he needs to shoot.  I originally saw in the ending that Cole had been given the chance to save the world and tragically failed.  But Jose never actually answers the question of who is intended for the kill.  Jose only gives him a gun in an airport, essentially making Cole the target.  Cole was never set up to save the world and yet he still tried.   

12 Monkeys has probably given me the longest ongoing movie experience of my life.  Starting before the movie with the teaser posters and continuing to morph into a strange foretelling of aspects of today.   

One last thing I will say is although I loved the costume design by Julie Weiss if I may give some humble advice from the future, I mean the past?  The present in the film is 2035.  If an airborne virus ravaged the world and the survivors were existing underground there may be some mask wearing.  Just a thought from the present.