There’s a part of me that really doesn’t like it when I come to a movie years after it came out, seeing it for the first time but basically knowing the ending. 95% of the time, that doesn’t bother me. I mean, I watch a lot of movies, and most of them end the way I expect them to. The heroes typically win. If it’s based on someone’s life, especially a musician, then it’ll end with that person’s greatest triumph or shortly thereafter. The character with the most screentime will probably survive the horror movie or at least be the last one to die. If I read the book, I can probably guess how it ends because rarely will a movie change an ending. I’m probably gonna hate that by-the-numbers Adam Sandler movie even if his character does learn a lesson. I know these things before I sit down to watch movies, and even with older movies where I somehow learned the ending through cultural osmosis, I can at least look for the foreshadowing.
But then I get to something like Jacob’s Ladder and really wish I knew nothing about it before I put it on. Oh well.
After an opening scene in Vietnam showing a group of American soldiers suddenly start dying, some in very bizarre ways, protagonist Jacob Singer (Tim Robbins) makes a run for it and something happens that I won’t mention here. We then cut to 1975, and Jacob, now working as a postal clerk, wakes up in the New York City subway to some odd visions involving tentacles on homeless people for starters. He nearly dies from being hit by a train, but he manages to avoid that and goes home to his certainly symbolic girlfriend by the name of Jezebel (Elizabeth Pena). As time passes, Jacob starts to see more and more demonic things as he goes about his life, and there’s a hint that he may have been exposed to some sort of chemicals or something in Vietnam. However, he also keeps flashing back to a time when he was married to another woman (Patricia Kalember) and a son he had who tragically died (an uncredited Macauley Culkin) sometime later. There are also various visions in Vietnam where Jacob isn’t doing too well. What is going on?
And that “what is going on?” question is why I wish I knew nothing about this movie going into it. Oh, it’s very well done in many ways. Robbins gives a good performance as a man who has no idea what’s going on, and that uncertainty may be driving him insane. This is a horror movie, after all, and while it does have some visceral moments, it really is more of a psychological horror. Jacob sees things, horrible things happen to people around him, and no one seems to believe him except for maybe his veteran friends, a group that includes Ving Rhames, so this really is a movie to sneak in a few familiar faces from the 90s that hadn’t quite hit it big yet. Did I mention a toupeed Jason Alexander plays a lawyer?
Regardless, the way the movie bounces back and forth through time and space is bound to create a disorienting feeling in the viewer unless, of course, you’re like me and know what’s going on. Again, I really wish I had come into this one cold. It’s very effective in what it does, but the mystery would be more fun than the knowing.
Arguably, Jacob’s life is not a very good one. He has multiple near-death experiences, often rescued by little more than good timing. He sees people die suddenly. He gets taken in for medical treatment without really telling anyone where he is. He’s haunted by past events involving his dead son and the war. His visions are driving a wedge between himself and Jezebel even if she keeps coming back. Arguably, the one truly benevolent person in his life is his chiropractor, played by Danny Aiello. What passes for wisdom or even an explanation for what’s happening comes from him, and he alone seems to be the one who shows nothing but care for Jacob in his plight. True, he may not be as helpful as he could be depending on how you interpret the end of the movie, but as part of a movie that asks us to really look into life and death and what it all means, as told through a single, confused character who needs to figure it all out before he loses whatever he has left.
Grade: B
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