
‘12 Monkeys’: Why Terry Gilliam’s Movie Is Relevant Today - colinprince
https://www.vulture.com/2018/11/12-monkeys-why-terry-gilliams-movie-is-so-relevant-today.html
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AJRF
"I’ve been thinking about 12 Monkeys a lot lately. It seems, these days, as
though the human race has passed a Rubicon and is now on a straight path
toward the end of days, or at least the end of the social order as we know
it."

This feels a little unsubstantiated.

Historically speaking, this is the greatest time on earth to be alive. This
pessimism is toxic and unrealistic.

~~~
DennisP
Historically speaking, the best time to own Bitcoin was back in January.
Things always look great at the top of a bubble.

CO2 is higher than in the past several million years and we're still adding
more at our usual pace. We've killed 60% of wild vertebrate life since 1970,
wiped out a large percentage of the insect population, and we're continuing
the practices that caused that as well. None of this can go on forever.

Almost everybody misses the main finding of the Club of Rome study: if you
model a simple assumption that resources get more expensive to extract over
time and environmental destruction gets more expensive to deal with, you don't
get a gradual decline. You get continued improvement up to a peak, and then it
suddenly crashes down.

What's really toxic: enjoying that run up to the peak and assuming
everything's fine, instead of buckling down and fixing the problems before
it's too late.

~~~
andrepd
The root cause of all of this: an economic system predicated on the notion of
_growth_. Unrestrained greed, sole focus on maximization of profit, and
unlimited growth. It's not enough to sell as many mobile phones as you did
last year, no, you must sell 10% more each quarter, or whatever. Doesn't
matter if you're mining the earth bare, generating millions of tons of
garbage, optimising for inferior products that break sooner, treating workers
like slaves in a race to the bottom... in other words making the world
objectively _worse_. All social considerations, moral, ecological, of welfare,
of justice, all those considerations don't enter the calculations. All that
matters is the quarterly shareholder report.

Like some guy said, "the only people who believe in infinite growth on a
finite planet are madmen and economists".

~~~
howlin
""" It's not enough to sell as many mobile phones as you did last year, no,
you must sell 10% more each quarter, or whatever. """

But if the next gen of phones use 30% less resources, it's still possible to
grow without increasing the rate of resource consumption. GDP growth has been
driven much more by innovation than added resource consumption for years.

~~~
jdc
However with Jevon's Paradox, we get the opposite consequence and people
consume even more.
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox)

------
cam_l
If you have not seen it, highly recommend the original film this was based on,
La Jette as mentioned in the article. It is a (shortish) masterpiece of French
SciFi, all in black and white, shot almost entirely in still scenes, and fully
narrated.

And i would argue it does follow fairly closely in terms of script and meaning
to the remake than the article suggests. It is much more subtle and nuanced.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Jet%C3%A9e](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Jet%C3%A9e)

~~~
rasz
La Jette reminds me of another under appreciated french movie Le Dernier
Combat. Double first for Luc Besson and Jean Reno.

~~~
gilbetron
A very disturbing PA movie, an amazing portrayal of the desolation and
loneliness in that situation.

------
tunap
While I loved 12 Monkeys story & most of TG's body of work, I must posit
"Brazil" is more relevant in our non-fiction world than anything else he has
done. I hesitate to note the multitude of similarities to our current state of
information retrieval & bureaucracies. Zero Theorem seemed to touch the needle
but sorta fizzled out mid-way(IMO).

Yes, I did not RTFA.

~~~
52-6F-62
I have to admit I still haven’t seen Brazil but it’s been on the to-Watch list
for a long time.

Zero Theorem just managed to depress the hell out of me for a week or so.

~~~
hnmonkey
Oh you should. It's a great movie. Absolutely weird and surreal but great.
Some of the themes you'll pick up from it are pervasive across tons of other
movies and genres all condensed into one wild ride.

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rossdavidh
So, perhaps the author is correct about the film's ending, but that's not the
way I interpreted it when I first saw it. Rather, it seemed to me that the
scientist from the future was there to insure that the disease did, in fact,
spread, even if Bruce Willis' character stopped the original source from
getting on the plane. She was either a carrier (a Typhoid Mary of sorts), or
else had her own vial. I thought it suggested that some of the scientists in
the future were in favor of the status quo, and wanted to sabotage the plans
of the majority of the scientists to alter the past.

But, perhaps my interpretation was overly cynical.

~~~
dudul
I'm glad I read this article because I never understood the ending that way.
I'm probably kind of dumb, but for me, the scientist at the end, on the plane,
was just there as part of the normal timeline. I never imagined that she
travelled from the future, I thought it was just her character before the
epidemic :)

~~~
jghn
This is so interesting as I'd always interpreted "insurance" as her being
there to stop the plague. I never considered either of your views nor the one
in the article. Now that I see there are so many possible interpretations it
really gives some fuel for thought.

~~~
jasonlotito
She can't stop the plague. They can't change that. It's well established. She
can't help the plague. It doesn't need help. This is also well established.
However, the whole point of sending Cole back was to find out where they could
get a clean version of the specimen. The earliest version of it. He succeeded.
She's the "insurance" on this whole thing. She can get a sample of the virus
so they can create a cure.

~~~
dudul
I think this is the most plausible meaning yes. My reading was pretty naive.
As for the "I work in insurance" part, I always thought it was her job before
the plague, and maybe it meant that the caste of "scientists" who were ruling
in the future were actually mostly con-people, self-proclaimed "scientists"
who took advantage of the collapse to take control. It doesn't really make
sense in a way, they invented time travel after all. In my defense, I saw this
movie when I was pretty young so most likely missed a lot of subtleties.

------
ctdonath
"the ’90s, that bizarre blip in American history where it seemed like we were
living in an eternal present, the End of History"

That's something millennials & later won't understand: 2000 was a mental
barrier we couldn't really think past. Objectively, people may have addressed
the next millennium's dates, but we just couldn't deeply believe we'd be
living in what was always colloquially called "the future".

~~~
api
I have a very different take. As someone who grew up in the 90s I draw the
line at 9/11\. That event ended the brief post cold war era of peace,
prosperity, and optimism. We still have not recovered culturally from 9/11\.
The optimism of the 90s is literally unthinkable today. The terrorists won.

~~~
ta_egdhs
idk why this is downvoted. the 90s is the period between the end of the cold
war and the start of the war on terror. its the only time in living memory
where there was no enemy.

9/11 absolutely changed the country. it was the start of militarized police,
nationalistic displays, and 24/7 fear that have all been normalized today.
Perhaps the terrorists didn't win (Bin Laden is dead and the house of Saud
still stands) but we certainly lost.

~~~
NeedMoreTea
Perhaps this is far too controversial a view for HN, and for many Americans,
we'll see.

The terrorists absolutely won. Least that's my perception as a non-American.
Your first mistake was legitimising them as "the enemy"

When the IRA were bombing Docklands, Manchester or Birmingham pubs we'd make a
poor taste joke the next morning, walk past the wreckage and forget about it
the day after that. When the Baader Meinhoff Group were killing public
figures, and bombing Brits, Germans and Americans over in Germany they were
treated as a bunch of insignificant extremists. Even by the Americans it
seemed from news reports. There'd be a poor taste joke or two, and they'd be
ignored. Much the same for other terrorist groups hijacking aircraft or
killing people through history. "Don't deal with terrorists" was heard from
every politician.

Then came 11/9 and the "war on terror." So determined were your politicians to
legitimise the terrorists it became a war. Against a legitimate target.
Globally. So determined were you to preserve your "freedoms" that you built an
apparatus of surveillance to ensure that freedom. Apparatus so far reaching
that it is indistinguishable from an apparatus of oppression. Most other
countries played along too in support, and built the same apparatus of
oppression to preserve freedom. Not only did the USA lose, and the terrorists
win, but the UK, France, Iraq, Malaysia etc lost too. So did freedom.

No more bad taste joke the morning after and treating them as a bunch of
irrelevant idiots unworthy of but the briefest air time (like I get the
impression most Americans still do with a group like the Westborough Baptist
Church), but an unwinnable war with a legitimate enemy and a leader, and
endless analysis. Everyone except them, globally, lost.

~~~
zdragnar
In a country of 325 million people, it seemed like there wasn't anyone who
didn't know someone either affected or directly harmed by the 9/11 (11/9 as
you call it) attacks. It didn't feel like "some poor saps over there got the
short end of the stick" it felt like "we're all directly attacked".

This wasn't the first time Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda reached out and
touched us. Previously, we'd treated him more or less the same as you'd
suggested, thinking back to the attack on the USS Cole we just lobbed some
missiles off into the desert and called it a day.

As for the surveillance apparatus that sprang up in response, there was most
certainly a backlash against it, with all the dystopian oppressive government
warnings. The general public didn't really mind much, though, because they'd
felt that the government fundamentally failed at what could theoretically have
been a preventable disaster.

So, given that, what were we to do? Say to our neighbors, "sorry, you have to
risk death in future attacks because I can't be arsed to wait longer in lines
at the airport"?

I don't think the terrorists have won, because their objective wasn't to make
our lives a little less pleasant. Their objective (as stated) is the
fundamental destruction of our nation. Sure, we've compromised our
constitution by allowing our government more power than it ought to have. The
consequences of our reaction, our actions (and lack of actions in other
places) will be felt for generations. That doesn't mean that the terrorists
have won, far from it.

~~~
NeedMoreTea
> (11/9 as you call it)

I normally transpose to US order when it's 9/11 as it's become the name. Date
habit got the better of me, sorry.

> So, given that, what were we to do? Say to our neighbors, "sorry, you have
> to risk death in future attacks because I can't be arsed to wait longer in
> lines at the airport"?

Not at all. It was a horrific, terrible event on an unprecedented scale, which
I don't wish to play down or disrespect. Perhaps no reaction could have kept
the trademark US unbounded optimism afterwards, but it seems that the reaction
changed more than the event itself.

If the reaction had been more like other incidents, the authorities could have
quietly done what authorities do whilst the politicians try to play down the
drama and immediate desire for revenge, reinforcing the need to mourn but
preserve all that's best of your way of life. The CIA and excellent special
forces might have clinically cut al Quaeda and its leaders to shreds over the
coming years with global support and enhanced US global reputation. It might
have taken longer, or been more difficult with an organisation like al Quaeda.
Smaller changes could have improved air security without the enormous security
theatre industry that's resulted.

The creation of the surveillance state, the invasions, ongoing military
casualties and gunboat diplomacy seems to have brought most of the changes to
society and attitudes and subsequent change in international views.

> The consequences of our reaction, our actions (and lack of actions in other
> places) will be felt for generations

That's basically my point.

~~~
zdragnar
>> The consequences of our reaction, our actions (and lack of actions in other
places) will be felt for generations

>That's basically my point.

I was replying more specifically to the claim that the terrorists have "won".
By any measure of their stated goals, that simply isn't the case. They didn't
want us to be inconvenienced, they wanted us to at least completely withdraw
our military from the middle east. Beyond that, they'd love for a total
collapse of society... Instead, we have been more heavily militarily
entrenched than before ever since.

------
ryanwaggoner
_It seems, these days, as though the human race has passed a Rubicon and is
now on a straight path toward the end of days, or at least the end of the
social order as we know it._

Is there some name for the phenomenon that as things get better, our
assessment of where things stand seems to get more and more pessimistic? I
feel like you see this in issues of racial and gender equality as well. Things
are _so_ much better than they were 100 years ago, but even as I write that,
I'm tempted to pre-empt it with an acknowledgement that things are still
terrible, because I know that I'm going to get a bunch of comments about how
bad race and gender relations are today. And those comments are not wrong, but
they ignore the context of all the progress that's been made.

There will always be some kind of crisis and existential risk looming for some
or all of civilization, but the more objectively better things get, the more
disinclined we seem to be to acknowledge the progress that's been made. Why is
that?

Don't get me wrong, climate change is horrific. But for almost the entire
second half of the last century, we faced the very real threat of nuclear
annihilation at any moment. It's terrifying how close we came to that tipping
point. For the first half of the last century, we had _two_ global wars that
killed tens of millions of people and whose outcomes were not certain. When I
read the history of World War I and II, I'm struck by how easily things could
have gone differently and perhaps left us with a much worse world than the one
we face today.

So while climate change is a huge problem, I think it's preferable to all-out
nuclear war. I think we'll figure it out in the long run, not without a lot of
suffering and cost, but we have options. Maybe I'm wrong though.

Regardless, as soon as we do, there will be some new problem that isn't
_quite_ as bad as climate change, and humanity will be as pessimistic as its
ever been about our future ability to thrive.

~~~
cf498
Nuclear holocaust would have been caused and was prevented by just a few
people. It would have been an action with a direct result. We could and did
also just stop with the nonsense.

We dont have that option for climate change. We have a worsening situation and
no realistic option to stop or even reverse things.

Differently put, nuclear holocaust was a threat, climate change an active
process.

~~~
ryanwaggoner
_We have a worsening situation and no realistic option to stop or even reverse
things._

I think this is where we probably disagree. I think things are going to get
pretty bad, and many will needlessly suffer and die, but we'll switch to
renewables and start doing large-scale geoengineering in the 2030s or 2040s to
reverse some of the damaging effects of climate change and eventually
stabilize things. Likely not before we've had some devastating wars and lost
many species, but I personally think most of the predictions of civilization
collapse are way overblown.

It's also possible that sometime in the next decade, all the nations of the
world join some kind of super Paris agreement, but I'm not hopeful.

~~~
cf498
>It's also possible that sometime in the next decade, all the nations of the
world join some kind of super Paris agreement, but I'm not hopeful.

It is to late for any meaningful change of heart to revert things. There is no
option of everyone realizing it was a mistake and fixing it in ten or twenty
years. We are currently at the possibility of mitigating the continuously
worsening effects of climate change and we are not even able to not increase
the degree of our negative impact every year. Instead we are still showing
growth in the area.

------
Cyph0n
If you’re interested in a more in-depth look at the 12 Monkeys universe, check
out the excellent TV series of the same title.

~~~
morganvachon
As the article stated though, they aren't really the same story and don't
share continuity. The show is good but it's not an adaptation of the film in
any meaningful way.

~~~
adetrest
Exactly, the show was ok but the film is much better. While the show takes
place in a similar universe, it's not a continuity.

~~~
hackinthebochs
The opposite is true to me. The film was OK, but the show was excellent.

~~~
stevenwoo
I rewatched both 12 Monkeys the film and Brazil and they both share an
incredibly unbelievable romance - in the first the scientist falls in love
with a homeless man and kisses him passionately over the span of about 10
minutes of screen time after thinking he was insane and finding proof he was a
time traveler (homeless people are humans, too, but if Cole had been living
like a homeless person long enough to appear like that he would have had a
pretty foul odor) and in Brazil, Sam Lowry and the female lead are arguing and
he singled handedly ends her career and in the next(?) scene we see them
together they are in bed pre/post consummation ( though of course that scene
makes more sense if it's only in his head after we watch the end of the
movie). The TV series also manages to top Brad Pitt's crazy guy, that I
thought was going to be impossible after hearing about the TV series
initially.

------
tomohawk
The message I got from the film is that when people give in to despair,
they're prone to take actions that may have catastrophic consequences. The
virologist has lost his faith (in whatever he may have had faith in) and has
become a nihilist. nihilists are the most dangerous sorts of people, as
they're likely to take any action at all, unconstrained by morality, ethics,
or common sense.

------
eternalban
The catastrophe in _12 Monkeys_ is due to the action of a single individual -
an ideologue concerned with the "biosphere". The pathology highlighted is
ideological thought that justifies mass murder.

Love certainly conquers all in this film. It is precisely love (here romantic
love) that weaves an unalterable thread through time and binds the two
individuals who are absolutely necessary for the future salvation of mankind.

"I’ve been thinking about 12 Monkeys a lot lately. It seems, these days, as
though the human race has passed a Rubicon and is now on a straight path
toward the end of days, or at least the end of the social order as we know
it." \- the OP.

"[I]sn’t it obvious that chicken little represents the sane vision? And that
homo sapiens’s motto, ‘Let’s go shopping,’ is the cry of the true lunatic?” -
the mass murdering virologist.

~~~
sametmax
I've rewatched the movie recently. Humanity is definitly not saved. The whole
quest is shown as being nothing a but a futile yet beautiful slice of life.
It's espacially underlined with the scene revealing the origin of the voice
mail that was supposedly the only clue of the whole shebang for the future
scientists.

~~~
dnautics
Isn't humanity saved? The main character's buddy from prison is able to show
up to try to save him because greatly improved the tech; he claims that mc is
a hero and things are headed to being solved?

~~~
nabla9
Not in the movie.

They definitely can't change the past. They live in block universe where there
is only one timeline that happens no matter what. They can only travel into
the past and observe and bring some stuff back. mc is a hero because he
discovers the real villain and sends message to the future.

The idea is to get sample of the original non-mutated virus and develop a cure
in the future so that they can live on the surface again, not to prevent the
outbreak.

The movie ends without a cure, but now the future scientists know who the
villain is, so they might send other people to intercept the villain when he
lands.

~~~
jlawson
I think the idea was that the woman scientist "in insurance" in the plane at
the end was in fact the next agent working on getting the pre-mutated virus.
She knew to go back to that time and get on that seat of that plane because
Cole's actions pinpointed the target, time, and place.

~~~
eternalban
Precisely. They have found the source, can take samples at each stop, and "get
people back on top" post Cole.

