Jacob's Ladder

[Mr. Broken]

Gimmick? Is that like when you get knocked on the head and wake up somewhere else?

[Cail]

No, that's called kidnapping.

[Menolly]

Gimmick? Is that like when you get knocked on the head and wake up somewhere else?

No, that's called kidnapping.

(depends on if you do it to yourself with a bag of ice, and suddenly wake up amongst SeaFesters.)

...oops, sorry. Wrong thread...

[Marv]

i thought this was a great film. just goes to show what happens if you spend too long working at the post office.

Here's a link to the original screen play. There's some extra cool stuff that never made it to the movie, so check it out.

home.online.no/~bhundlan/scripts/JacobsLadder.doc

[danlo]

Very cool Marv! Thanks! (Now if I could just get ol' Lore in here my pro-JL army will be complete! )

I'm pretty detail oriented (anal) and I didn't see a single thing out of place from the post office to the apartment to the body parts in the corridor: that in itself indicates a very professional production. Robbins should play Covenant, but his nose is too big .

Vietnam veterans themselves, when I was in the Navy and out, have told me plenty of stories of "aids" used to keep watch and keep platoons hypervigilant, and there's also a fairly wellknown story about a certian "speed" destroyer experiment. Like the Nevada test sites, Bimini and Iraq we can't forget what these guys went through...

[Montresor]

For me, I guess the title alone forewarns me it was "dream" oriented; I definitely assumed that from the start of the thread. After all, Jacob fought with an angel on the ladder in a dream...

Full-points, Menolly!

It's funny, but many people don't think too much about story titles (can't blame them too much, as most titles are pretty straight-forward). G.K. Chesterton's The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare was criticised on it's release for being too unbelievable, and having an eccentric, contradictory ending. People even complained that "it seemed like a dream". Chesterton responded with "did you read the title?"

Jacob's Ladder is not the same as all those old kid's stories written in primary school where the main character wakes up with the "thank god, it was just a dream . . ." The whole point of JL's theme is that what you are watching isn't exactly real, it's an inner struggle which, through its fantasy world, unmasks an unpleasant truth, and reinforces the ultimate tragedy of the tale.

Hands-down, a solid masterpiece.

[danlo]

Montressor, see the addition to my post above...as I edited at the same time.

[Montresor]

I hadn't noticed your post when I wrote mine

I think the film's message re: experimentation on unwilling/uninformed subjects is always going to be timeless. Even outside of the numerous military examples one could cite, you don't need to look much farther than the infamous Tuskegee Syphilis study of adult black men, conducted by the U.S. Public Health Service to be seriously disgusted at what can be allowed to go on.

[Farm Ur-Ted]

This was made in 1990-way before The Sixth Sense, etc...it was one of the first modern films to use this gimmick and knowing he.

Well, I think right around the time I saw the movie, I'd just read

Spoiler

Pincher Martin by William Golding.

It's another on of those "Oops, sorry you thought he was alive but really he was dying throughout the whole book" stories and it was all a dream type of deals. What can I say, I can't stand that type of story. So Jacob's Ladder totally pissed me off. Like I said before, I can't stand books, movies etc. that use that particular device. And I do think it's a gimmick; if it weren't, they'd tell you right from the beginning that everything was a dream instead of waiting until the end. At least that's how I see it.

[Mr. Broken]

I am on Kevins Watch right? A fan site developed almost completely around a collection of stories where one of the main facets of that particular story is that the main character cant determine whether or not what he is seeing is real, or a dream. Yeah I hate stories like that too.

[Menolly]

I am on Kevins Watch right? A fan site developed almost completely around a collection of stories where one of the main facets of that particular story is that the main character cant determine whether or not what he is seeing is real, or a dream. Yeah I hate stories like that too.

I thought the same, but couldn't phrase how to ask that. However, the difference being that TC (and the reader) know he is questioning what is happening from the start of his experience, not two-thirds or more into the story...

And again, title comes into play as well. "The Unbeliever" is a significant hint as to the ambiguity of the realism.

[Farm Ur-Ted]

However, the difference being that TC (and the reader) know he is questioning what is happening from the start of his experience, not two-thirds or more into the story...

Exactly, you know the whole way through that things are ambiguous, and the books don't rely on a "trick" ending, that if you tell anyone the "trick" before they read the story or see the movie, then you'll ruin it for them. There's a big difference, at least for me.

[Mr. Broken]

Fair enough.

[danlo]

There are some parts, early in the movie, when Singer asks if he's dead...or in hell.

[Marv]

Spoiler

If you make a movie about a dead guy that's having trouble letting go of the unresolved parts of his life then it's necessary for him NOT to be aware that he's dead. It wouldn't work otherwise. And as the film is taken from Jake's perspective it's impossible to let the audience know that he's dead while Jake is still unaware. Besides, the emotional connection we have with Jake stems from the fact that none of us truly knows what's going on.

[Montresor]

Exactly.

[Zarathustra]

On a slightly related note, this doesn't only have to be about dying and accepting one's death and letting go those parts you're clinging to. It is also very much like a psychedelic trip. I don't think it's coincidence that this movie is very heavily influenced by a drug subtext which becomes more literal as the movie goes on. Has anyone read the Psychedelic Experience by Timothy Leary? It's a meditation guide for use during high-dose tripping, based of the Tibetan Book of the Dead, the Bardo Thodol,which is also about how to navigate successfully into the afterlife by letting go. Avoiding a bad trip is very much like this. The drug is rearranging your consciousness, setting you free from your social conditioning to such a great extent that your Self starts to break down and dissolve away, enabling you to experience a type of consciousness that isn't filtered and limited by this singularity view of the ego. Sounds scary? It is. When people resist out of fear, this causes a bad trip. But when you give in to it, you experience samadhi and a feeling of euphoria associated which such a state: ecstasy.

The parallels between the Tibetan book of the Dead, and the psychedelic experience itself (the experience, not the book) are close enough that Learly modeled his meditation guide upon the former. The angels and demons talk in Jacob's Ladder capture this parallel in both languages: drug-induced consciousness expansion, and death.

Yes, this is a fantastic movie.

[Menolly]

...desire to experience said movie has just been cranked up a notch...

[danlo]

Excellent post Malik! Finally someone enunciated one of the three major themes not talked about.

[Zarathustra]

Exactly, you know the whole way through that things are ambiguous, and the books don't rely on a "trick" ending, that if you tell anyone the "trick" before they read the story or see the movie, then you'll ruin it for them. There's a big difference, at least for me.

That's actually a very good point. I was thinking the same thing as Mr Broken and Menolly, but you responded very well, shutting down that objection. Good reply. I think you're right about this distinction . . . though I still like Jacob's Ladder. But without question, Donaldson's work is better. And one of the reasons is exactly what you pointed out here.

Menolly and Danlo: thanks!