Jacob’s Ladder
Jacob Singer’s life has become a nightmare, a man who worked years to obtain his doctorate in philosophy but now works for the US postal service, whose marriage crumbled following the death of his young son, Gabriel, his wife leaving and taking both Jed and Eli, trying to make a relationship work with Jezzie but encumbered by a past for which she has little patience or sympathy and the now plagued by hallucinations, pale, distorted faces in subway car windows staring at him, seizures which leave him incapacitated.
Plagued by flashbacks of the Vietnam War, of an attack on his encampment in the Mekong Delta in October 1971 which left many of his friends dead and Jacob seriously wounded, only surviving because he was airlifted to safety, he is contacted by fellow survivor Paul Gruneger who is suffering the same visions; killed in a explosion moments after their meeting, Jacob’s attempts to investigate are blocked even as his own condition deteriorates.
Directed by Adrian Lyne after his international success with Fatal Attraction, released in 1990 Jacob’s Ladder was based on a script by Bruce Joel Rubin first developed a decade before, the story continuing the obsession with the transition between life and death and how it is approached, interpreted and accepted, or alternatively forestalled or even reversed, which has informed much of his work before and after, Brainstorm, Deadly Friend, Ghost, My Life and The Last Mimzy.
Starring Tim Robbins as Jacob, increasingly haunted and tortured but determined to make sense of the madness his life is becoming, Jezzie (Elizabeth Peña) understandably concerned and his long-standing doctor Louis Denardo (Danny Aiello) whom Jacob sees as an angel his only ally, he is contacted by a stranger who claims he was a former prisoner granted clemency to work on chemical weapons during the war, stating that Jacob and his division were test subjects for “the ladder,” indicated to be quinuclidinyl benzilate in the postscript.
The streets and subways of New York a waking nightmare in moody shadow and backlit mist, while Jacob’s Ladder had impact upon original release the foreshadowing now reads as heavy, the opening battle scene segueing into Jacob waking to see a literal sign to Hell, the palm-reader who says he is already dead, Louie counselling him that his anguish is a symptom of his refusal to let go of the memories and attachments of life, all of it before the shift to conspiracy thriller.
The lies and disinformation intended to discredit Jacob a red herring which would have played better earlier in the film, Jacob’s Ladder is an inherently disappointing story overly familiar, from An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge published exactly one hundred years before, from The Sixth Sense and Lost, most recently from All the Devils Are Here, undeniably an excellent example in terms of mood and menace but one which suffers from a lack of mystery when the twist is so obvious.
Jacob’s Ladder is available on 4K UHD Steelbook, Blu-ray and digital download from StudioCanal now
