Who would’ve thought the creator of such sappy sentimentality as the Patrick Swayze vehicle Ghost would be able to pull off this faultless cinematic gem? Jacob’s Ladder is an intricate, haunting puzzle, and immune to the exhaustion of repeated viewing. It’s amazing.
Densely conjured, Jacob’s Ladder is a quantum-layered riddle, coyly dipping into Romance, Thriller, War-Drama and occult Horror.
Featuring the lumbering, boy-giant frame of a young Tim Robbins in the title role, the movie follows parallel realities in the wake of Jacob Singer’s mysterious breakdown in Vietnam. Plagued by wrong-life flashbacks and crippling visions that seem to spasm right out of hell (hands down some of the most unnerving and shit-scary moments in 20th Century cinema), Singer stumbles onto a possible resolution to his frightening, disjointed life. Only to have the answers topple away again.
A prototype for the kind of chronological about-turns later made famous in Mulholland Drive, one of David Lynch’s masterworks, and the films of M. Night Shyamalan, Jacob’s Ladder makes the latter look an amateur and the former straight forward, juggling as it does several strands of possibility with poetic verve.
Demons; Nam conspiracy theories; a lip-smacking Jezebel; startling wonder and a touching humanity. Utterly brilliant.
[First published in Muse magazine.]
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