10/05/10 - Jacob's Ladder

Jacob's Ladder (1990, 113 min)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0099871/

This is a pretty weird movie that I decide to check out now. I'd read a little bit about it but not much. I'd heard it was a little twisted and out there and so for that it met my monthly criteria.

The film follows Jacob Singer (Tim Robbins) after he's returned from Vietnam. Through a very complicated dream sequence meshed with reality that turns and folds in on itself throughout the film, we're also introduced to the following characters: Jezzie (Elizabeth Peña), Louis (Danny Aiello), and Michael (Matt Craven).

I had read the "it was all a dream" twist a long time ago and that it applied to this movie but I didn't know in what exact context. Because of that, I didn't really see the "he was dead the whole time" twist, so I was pretty surprised when that turned out to be the reveal. However, there were pros and cons to this. First, the pros. The biggest thing here is that the reveal is absurd and bizarre but yet works for the film. In a way. That's the biggest con for me: it makes the whole film useless. Basically, what the twist is that the whole movie is a flash before Jacob's eyes before he dies or something. So how can I, as a viewer, extract any meaning or significance from anything in this movie if the whole thing is grounded in falsity? I don't feel I can. I mean, there's tons of other movies that are clearly grounded in make believe, but these films usually serve different purposes. I feel that I'm supposed to ask questions about Jacob's Ladder. There's clearly a lot of religious symbolism and religious subtexts here and I'll admit that I didn't catch probably most of them and definitely probably not most of the meanings of these. Anyway, at the end of the viewing, I can't sit there and say I took much out of Jacob's Ladder simply because nothing really mattered. Sure, it's a cool twist and it works in some way, but it also fails on some other levels.

Next, Jacob's Ladder does two specific things that I want to note. First, there's this blending of the real world and the false world within the dream world. It's complicated but actually ends up working fairly well. It's this unsettling feeling that Jacob's Ladder creates that works really well. Really, this dream world isn't revealed until the very end so it's basically a conflict between the real world of Jacob Singer and this nightmare world of his. In one, he's happily married while in the other he's separated from his wife and living with Jezzie. The first is the "real" world and the second is the "nightmare" where he sees demons all over the place and just is overall not at ease. What really works here though is that this nightmare world has some things that clearly defy logic but in a way such that with a simple stretch they could be real. For example, the odd occurrences that happen at the party (the reading of Jacob's palm lines) are grounded enough in reality but still unsettling enough to make this whole blending of "reality" and "nightmare" really confusing.

The other thing I want to single out about Jacob's Ladder is a specific shot that is really used just way too much. It's this top-down shot that usually shows Jacob lying on his back be it after being stabbed in Vietnam or while in his bathtub after his fever. Anyway, I don't know what the real use is here. When I initially see this view I think of a Jesus figure like on the cross or something but I don't think that's the intended purpose here. I honestly just don't know what the intention is. Is it supposed to be "more important" or something if shown this way? I don't know, but the frequent use of the shot is a little annoying.

Overall, I gave this film a 4/10. Jacob's Ladder is weird and twisted and it does do quite a bit right. But really, nothing matters if it's all a "dream" and if by the nature of the film, I'm supposed to have questions about it. This is ultimately what plummets the movie's score to the below average range. On a final note, one last positive is that Elizabeth Peña is really cute.