Jacob's LadderPeople who suffer from post-traumatic stress can have such varied experiences as paranoia and delusions of a religious and conspiratorial nature. But the hallucinations that Jacob Singer (Tim Robbins) has are beyond the pale; these visions tormenting him may be actual devils. Jacob's Ladder is the story of Jacob, or "Jake", a Vietnam veteran who has separated from his wife, Sarah (Patricia Kalember), and is in a relationship with his girlfriend and co-worker at the post office, Jezebel "Jezzie" Pipkin (Elizabeth Peña). After Jake begins to experience various strange phenomena, he reconnects with his former war buddies who are experiencing similar effects. As each new layer of this mystery is peeled away, the conspiracy grows deeper and darker.
|
|
Directed by Adrian Lyne and written by Bruce Joel Rubin, Jacob's Ladder is a psychological horror movie in the literal sense. The film opens with a scene of the Vietnam War; Jake and his army buddies are ambushed and the ensuing carnage highlights the traumatic effects of war. He and his compatriots all react violently or irrationally to the chaos; some fall into fits, while others freeze up entirely. Jake snaps out of this scene after he is viciously stabbed; he "wakes up" on a subway after working a late shift, still in his postal uniform. There are numerous suggestions that Jake is already dead. He passes through dark corridors in his lonely journey on the subway. He is "trapped" in this "underworld" after he gets off at his stop, where the walls are decorated with advertisements that read "Hell". Jake's perceptions of reality share more in common with a nightmare; from a creepy, reptilian appendage on a bum to the warped visages of passersby in cars and subway trains, it is as if demons possess the living, or at least masquerade as them. Seemingly "normal" human beings suddenly exhibit bizarre behavior, or display some physical abnormality that to Jake is evidence of a greater conspiracy at play--something "out to get him". Jacob's Ladder is filled with religious iconography and biblical references. Jake's children--including his late son, Gabe (a young Macaulay Culkin)--are all named after figures from the Bible. Jake teases Jezzie about this, since her Old Testament counterpart lured men away from their true path--ironic considering that Jake has been having an affair with her. Jake comments to his chiropractor, Louis Denardo (Danny Aiello), that after he adjusts his spine and he is feeling transcendent from the pain, he looks up at Louis and regards him like a cherubic angel. (The word "chiropractor", which comes from "hands", sounds a lot like "Chi Rho", a Greek christogram used to describe Jesus Christ.) Louis is like Jake's priest, who he confides to and someone who is devoted to his "salvation"; when Jake is being kept in a hospital, Louis actually storms the place and takes him out like a guardian angel.
Jacob's Ladder gets its title from the biblical story of the same name, one that describes a transcendent existential crisis and a network connecting Heaven and Earth; in the film, the connection to the supernatural seems more demonic than angelic. The "ladder" is referenced in varying forms, from a set of stairs inviting Jake upward into solace, to the rescue helicopter that life-flights him out of the war zone, with the thrum of the rotor blades beating like the wings of angels. Is Jacob being plagued by horrible monsters, or are these just "flashbacks" from post-traumatic stress disorder? His visions are vivid and startling, but they are also influenced by innocuous things. When he is at a wild party with Jezzie, a crow in a cage startles him, and he sees what looks like a skinned skull of some picked over beast, wrapped in plastic in the fridge. But these bizarre images are no comparison for the danse macabre that follows when he sees Jezzie in a frenetic dance set to strobe lights with some shadowy beast--a wild frenzy both erotic and terrifying. Although Jacob sees it, is it really there? Reality is never assured in Jacob's Ladder, and virtually every scene is suspect--of having a double meaning, of masking a conspiracy, of being an illusion crafted by Jacob's mind as a defense mechanism. These terrifying visions could even be created by something else trying to trap Jacob in a psychological or metaphysical prison. When one of Jake's war buddies named Paul (Pruitt Taylor Vince) tells him of his visions, Jake recognizes them and believes he is on the verge of an answer to this mystery plaguing him--sometimes literally, like when he contracts a horrid fever that overwhelms him. He and the other army veterans from his battalion try to convince a cynical lawyer named Geary (Jason Alexander) to investigate whether the United States government tested drugs on them or performed some other experiment. They believe that because of their shared history, it must be the after effects that have left them in this constant state of paranoid delusion. But just as soon as the promise of answers is on the horizon, all of the other ex-soldiers pull out of the case, and Jake suddenly finds himself being threatened by mafia types. Afterward, Jake is approached by a man who earlier saved Jake from the blast radius of an exploding car; he brings with him answers that seem to justify Jake's conspiracy theories. Calling himself Michael Newman (Matt Craven), this man supports Jake's hypothesis about being experimented on with a drug called "Ladder", a hallucinogenic a la MKULTRA designed to provoke extreme violence and rage in its victims. Michael tells him that he was commissioned to create it, and knew it was administered to Jake's platoon. But aren't these responses just the kind of "fiction" that one might expect a delusional mind to create in order to justify its convictions? This sense of doubt is so constant in Jacob's Ladder, that even when something is being spelled out for us by a character like Newman (whose name might as well be another play on words), we are always waiting for the other shoe to drop.
What makes the psychological and existential terrors that haunt Jacob worse are the visceral and unnerving imagery that accompany them. Figures in the shadows shake their head around at high speed and the hospital where Jake believes he's taken to after being assaulted has more in common with an abattoir--a place where he is strapped down in archaic-looking machinery and has a needle jammed into his forehead. These morbid environments and jarring moments designed to shock and startle the audience are more effective because of the constant sense of dread that pervades Jacob's Ladder. The ability of the film to evoke unease with malignant terror has also been effective in video games inspired by Jacob's Ladder, including the "Silent Hill" series (with a similar narrative structure and look), and even "Hotline Miami 2", which borrows the hallucinogenic style of PTSD as a part of one of its story arcs. Jacob's Ladder was inspired by the works of painter Francis Bacon, whose bleak and unsettling imagery is both strongly religious and brutally organic. (I also sensed an inspiration from the works of William Blake in the film, whose paintings depicted a potent mix of divinity and darkness.) Jake's struggle in Jacob's Ladder comes from trying to understand his place in this purgatory between Heaven and Hell, stuck halfway on a ladder where up and down are not absolute.
Recommended for: Fans of a psychological horror film which uses religious iconography, Vietnam flashbacks, and conspiracy theory as layers that always seems ambiguous and abstract, no matter how many are peeled away. Jacob's Ladder is a story about coming to terms with an existential crisis, and overcoming the associated demons.
Jacob's Ladder gets its title from the biblical story of the same name, one that describes a transcendent existential crisis and a network connecting Heaven and Earth; in the film, the connection to the supernatural seems more demonic than angelic. The "ladder" is referenced in varying forms, from a set of stairs inviting Jake upward into solace, to the rescue helicopter that life-flights him out of the war zone, with the thrum of the rotor blades beating like the wings of angels. Is Jacob being plagued by horrible monsters, or are these just "flashbacks" from post-traumatic stress disorder? His visions are vivid and startling, but they are also influenced by innocuous things. When he is at a wild party with Jezzie, a crow in a cage startles him, and he sees what looks like a skinned skull of some picked over beast, wrapped in plastic in the fridge. But these bizarre images are no comparison for the danse macabre that follows when he sees Jezzie in a frenetic dance set to strobe lights with some shadowy beast--a wild frenzy both erotic and terrifying. Although Jacob sees it, is it really there? Reality is never assured in Jacob's Ladder, and virtually every scene is suspect--of having a double meaning, of masking a conspiracy, of being an illusion crafted by Jacob's mind as a defense mechanism. These terrifying visions could even be created by something else trying to trap Jacob in a psychological or metaphysical prison. When one of Jake's war buddies named Paul (Pruitt Taylor Vince) tells him of his visions, Jake recognizes them and believes he is on the verge of an answer to this mystery plaguing him--sometimes literally, like when he contracts a horrid fever that overwhelms him. He and the other army veterans from his battalion try to convince a cynical lawyer named Geary (Jason Alexander) to investigate whether the United States government tested drugs on them or performed some other experiment. They believe that because of their shared history, it must be the after effects that have left them in this constant state of paranoid delusion. But just as soon as the promise of answers is on the horizon, all of the other ex-soldiers pull out of the case, and Jake suddenly finds himself being threatened by mafia types. Afterward, Jake is approached by a man who earlier saved Jake from the blast radius of an exploding car; he brings with him answers that seem to justify Jake's conspiracy theories. Calling himself Michael Newman (Matt Craven), this man supports Jake's hypothesis about being experimented on with a drug called "Ladder", a hallucinogenic a la MKULTRA designed to provoke extreme violence and rage in its victims. Michael tells him that he was commissioned to create it, and knew it was administered to Jake's platoon. But aren't these responses just the kind of "fiction" that one might expect a delusional mind to create in order to justify its convictions? This sense of doubt is so constant in Jacob's Ladder, that even when something is being spelled out for us by a character like Newman (whose name might as well be another play on words), we are always waiting for the other shoe to drop.
What makes the psychological and existential terrors that haunt Jacob worse are the visceral and unnerving imagery that accompany them. Figures in the shadows shake their head around at high speed and the hospital where Jake believes he's taken to after being assaulted has more in common with an abattoir--a place where he is strapped down in archaic-looking machinery and has a needle jammed into his forehead. These morbid environments and jarring moments designed to shock and startle the audience are more effective because of the constant sense of dread that pervades Jacob's Ladder. The ability of the film to evoke unease with malignant terror has also been effective in video games inspired by Jacob's Ladder, including the "Silent Hill" series (with a similar narrative structure and look), and even "Hotline Miami 2", which borrows the hallucinogenic style of PTSD as a part of one of its story arcs. Jacob's Ladder was inspired by the works of painter Francis Bacon, whose bleak and unsettling imagery is both strongly religious and brutally organic. (I also sensed an inspiration from the works of William Blake in the film, whose paintings depicted a potent mix of divinity and darkness.) Jake's struggle in Jacob's Ladder comes from trying to understand his place in this purgatory between Heaven and Hell, stuck halfway on a ladder where up and down are not absolute.
Recommended for: Fans of a psychological horror film which uses religious iconography, Vietnam flashbacks, and conspiracy theory as layers that always seems ambiguous and abstract, no matter how many are peeled away. Jacob's Ladder is a story about coming to terms with an existential crisis, and overcoming the associated demons.