Directed by Adrian Lyne
Written by Bruce Joel Rubin
Starring Tim Robbins, Elizabeth Peña, Danny Aiello, Matt Craven, Jason Alexander, Eriq La Salle, Ving Rhames, Macaulay Culkin
Genre: Drama / Fantasy / Horror / Mystery / Thriller
Country: USA
Runtime: 115 minutes
MPAA Rating: Rated R

Evaluation: 10/10
by Greg Ferguson







Visions of Heaven and Hell in films have always intrigued me largely because I'm so unmoved by the traditionally accepted beliefs of pearly gates and fire and brimstone. The promise of each is so rich in possibility, but the finality of an eternity in either domain strikes me as boring at best and cruel at worst, allowing no room for growth or redemption. Ingmar Bergman has famously grappled with these two realms with great unease (see The Seventh Seal and Cries And Whispers), and Hirokazu Koreeda made one of my favourite films on the subject (After Life) that was as hopeful as it was bleak, but the one that perhaps presents the most accurate picture of my particular anxieties and desires is Adrian Lyne's hallucinatory howl Jacob's Ladder. Here, the question of Heaven and Hell is left without a solid answer, evenly fluctuating between further stages of existence and discordant states of mind and prompting us to wonder whether we can ever really know that we're dead or alive - if not both. That's a thought certain to be unsettling and scary to many, but one I have always suspected and feared might be true.

Jacob's Ladder is rife with disorienting moments (it's a telling characteristic that you're more likely to exclaim "What the Hell?!" than anything else), but the first one is all-important. In a jungle clearing during the Vietnam War, a band of American soldiers is overtaken in a flurry of violence. There are casualties, and they seem real. The man at the centre of this story, Jacob Singer (Tim Robbins), looks like he is fatally impaled by a bayonet-wielding enemy, though we see him years after riding an underground subway in New York City which is eerily occupied by what he can only describe as "demons." Of course, he could just be seeing things. Now a US postal worker, he has just put in overtime and is understandably exhausted. Mildly shaken, he thinks little of it until more strange episodes start recurring at any increasing rate (my favourite: a frenzied dancefloor sequence at a party turned suddenly ghoulish). Everything finally culminates in a dizzying series of cracks in his reality that jerk him around and hurtle him back to that moment in Vietnam when he was attacked.

Astute observers will likely predict the film's outcome ahead of time, but Lyne's direction is wise enough to avoid hinging its merit on any revelatory surprise (unlike that chintzy apparition knock-off The Sixth Sense). What truly counts is the mood created out of its mounting paranoia and the suggestion that the line separating Heaven and Hell is a lot less firm than we'd like to believe. Naturally, this is made all the more possible by the gallery of fine performances, the best being Robbins, who bears the brunt of the film's psychological torment well and convincingly gives us a sincere man slowly unraveling and spiraling into an abyss of his own primal distress. Elizabeth Peña is also notable for her shifty turn as Jacob's live-in girlfriend, Jezzie (short for Jezebel, with all the obvious implications). With a screenplay as tricky and ambiguous as this one, it is to their credit that they found the right tone to lend their characters credibility throughout.

Though it may come off as relentlessly chaotic and grim, the film has a pensive and spiritual upside. Lyne is a director interested in drawing audiences into his material, usually by asking us to consider our values pertaining to sexual responsibility (9½ Weeks, Lolita) and fidelity (Indecent Proposal, Unfaithul), but with Jacob's Ladder he is daring us to confront our attachments and priorities and consider how the way we choose to live relates to our sense of peace and harmony. It is a work of bravery and great power.

(Jacob's Ladder is available on DVD and may be rented from Spit It Video located at 15 Lewis St., Moncton.)