Jacob's Ladder [Blu-ray]

Great film.

Jacob's Ladder is a hallucinogenic psychological thriller that made myself hallucinate. Another film that has garnered cult status over the years, more so for its unique nightmarish flashback narrative structure. I honestly had to sit in silence for a good ten minutes and attempt to string some words together to surmise this film. Simply put: "A confusing mystery of confusing confusion". *sigh*...I'm going to need my notebook next time. Jacob is wounded during the Vietnam war, years later he starts to see hallucinations and experience depressing flashbacks which leads him to investigate the sudden mental visions. I mean...how do I even collate adjectives and superlatives to create a review for this? It's so bizarrely executed that it left me questioning if this was a hidden masterpiece or just difficult for the sake of melting the brains of the audience. Currently, I sit in the middle. It's an intriguing perspective into a heightened mind during a visceral heart-pumping experience such as the Vietnam War, where secret experiments with hallucinogens were utilised as a means to increase aggression. That aside, the primary appeal to this thriller is the intricate narrative structure. Is it real? Fabricated? Nostalgic memories or malicious nightmares? The careful construct of the plot will leave you questioning every scene up until its conclusion (which still left me scratching my head occasionally). It's rapid pacing, consistently blending ghostly fantasies with reality, which certainly needs to be adjusted to. The constant transitions between flashbacks is jarring, particularly for the first half, but stick with it and all will be answered. Robbins gives yet another exceptional performance as a man undergoing psychological delusions. My main negative is the fact it was so...how to put it..."in your face", that actually I cannot remember the majority of scenes. It's like a jigsaw puzzle, you don't remember slotting each piece in but you do acknowledge the final product. Jacob's Ladder is just that, an absurdly hallucinogenic jigsaw puzzle that definitely needs to be revisited again.

Definitely a cult classic of its genre, magnum opus of Adrian Lyne. But, I must warn that "Jacob's Ladder" is not for everyone, ideally suited for mature, patient and attentive viewers because, as being difficult to follow and hard to digest, it is not an easy pill to swallow. It gets more and more cracked and convoluted at every turn, but ultimately so much rewarding if you could sit through from beginning to end.The plot is multi-layered, segueing from alternate "realities" to the odd bouts of hallucinations. First layer is Jacob's lurid experience in Vietnam, a sinister battle in Mekong Delta, where his guts were pierced by a deadly bayonet thrust by an unseen assailant; Then, his post-Nam NYC "life" comes with flashbacks showing the days with his girlfriend Jezzie, who is compelled to cope with his intermittent psychotic episodes and gradual mental degeneration; Suddenly, we cut to his pre-Nam days during which he lives happily with his ex-wife and kids. At one point he is visited by his dead son, and haunted by his death scene.These phantasmagoric trips occur between the pre-Nam/post-Nam worlds and the viewer gets overwhelmingly baffled whether which of these worlds were real and which were fantasy. And in all these worlds, he incessantly struggles to battle his inner demons appearing everywhere in "outside" world. Is he slipping into insanity; are all these mess a result of being doped by a mind-altering drug, making the soldiers hyper-violent war machines during the battle; is there a conspiracy by government to silence him; is he alive or is he dead? What a mishmash... You would be bombarded with such questions, and some red herrings throughout the film.In terms of technical aspects; masterful camerawork (virtually no computer-generated FX), bland color saturation, unconventional camera angles and ingenious direction by Lyne combine with all these blurred elements to create a haunting picture.Although the ending seems to be dark and ambiguous, I think the film proves to be intellectually and logically complete. If you see this movie merely as a hapless man's ordeal on physical world, you have missed the main point and I recommend to watch again: look beyond the visuals, don't think the events on a linear time scale and pay a strict attention (especially talkings of Jacob's chiropractor, Dr. Louis) to the hints scattered throughout the movie.Last word: haunting and mind-blowing. Not for casual movie-goers. Watch it alone in the dark... (4.5/5.0)

The title of this movie, Jacob's Ladder, references the bible story of the same name. In the bible story, Jacob is on the run having angered his brother Esau for stealing his birthright. He stops to rest one night laying his head on a rock and while asleep dreams/envisions angels ascending and descending a ladder connecting earth to heaven. Above the ladder is God who reassures Jacob, that despite the mistakes he's made in life, God will bless him and his children and always be with him. In the movie, set a few years after the end of the Vietnam war, the main character, Jacob, portrayed superbly by Tim Robbins, is dealing with the traumas he has experienced while serving in the US military and the trauma of separation from his wife and the death of his son. The movie begins with "normal" life of his job as a mailman and living with his girlfriend. As time passes, unnatural occurrences take place. With increasing frequency and more violent imagery, his dreams and waking visions take over his life. These visions, as the movie continues, enlighten the viewer about what really has happened to Jacob and his military comrades years before. Without giving away anything further about the plot for those who haven't seen the movie yet, the "ladder" represents many things, connection between heaven and hell, life and death, the journey of life itself. What do our lives mean? What happens when we die? The last scene of the movie, for me, is the ladder for this particular Jacob, and it's a beautiful scene, with the light streaming in onto the wood staircase in the house.....Some may feel that twenty years later this movie is "dated" and not executed as well as it could have been but I feel it's a unique vision of a man's experience in the aftermath of military and family catastrophe.