JACOB'S LADDER (Adrian Lyne, US, 1990). THEME: PTSD, AFTER VIETNAM COMBAT; EXCELLENT DEPICTION OF TRAUMATIC COMBAT FLASHBACKS. SPOILER ALERT! Was Jacob Singer (Tim Robbins) killed in combat in Vietnam in 1971, air-evaced in time to save him, or was he never in Vietnam at all? Does he now have a PhD and live with his wife and two sons in a swank New York City apartment house? Or is he a lowly postal worker who left his family and took up with Jezebel (Elizabeth Peña), a coworker? Did Gabe, one of his sons, die? Are nightmarish horned creatures chasing him, trying to kill him? Why won’t his old Army buddies talk to him anymore? Was he a subject in a clandestine aggression-enhancing drug experiment run by the government out of Saigon during the war? What scenes in this film represent Jake’s trauma-related flashbacks, drug-related flashbacks, nightmares, psychotic hallucinations, or just plain memories? Or were all the scenes except combat merely reveries as he lay in semi-coma near death? Did a dead Jake return as a ghost? Sheeez. Who knows? After watching this mesmerizing but hopelessly confusing film, I could go on and on building a list of all the questions raised but unanswered in this screenplay from Hell.
So, if you see this movie, don’t trouble yourself too much trying to make sense of it. However, it is worth seeing as a psychflick because it so well dramatizes and portrays one of the cardinal features of PTSD: vivid flashbacks - intense, distressing daytime recollections and nightmares in which the traumatic events are revisited. The best such sequence occurs very close to the beginning of the film, when Jake’s squad, in the jungle near Da Nang, gets stoned and then is attacked. (With Danny Aiello as Louis, Jacob’s talented chiropractor. By the way, the strange script was written by Bruce Joel Rubin, possibly while ripped on psychedelic substances, I should wonder. Mr. Lyne also directed Flashdance, Fatal Attraction, Indecent Proposal and the 1997 version of Lolita, with Jeremy Irons, among other films.) Grades: drama: B; screenplay: D; portrayal of PTSD flashbacks: A (11/04)
So, if you see this movie, don’t trouble yourself too much trying to make sense of it. However, it is worth seeing as a psychflick because it so well dramatizes and portrays one of the cardinal features of PTSD: vivid flashbacks - intense, distressing daytime recollections and nightmares in which the traumatic events are revisited. The best such sequence occurs very close to the beginning of the film, when Jake’s squad, in the jungle near Da Nang, gets stoned and then is attacked. (With Danny Aiello as Louis, Jacob’s talented chiropractor. By the way, the strange script was written by Bruce Joel Rubin, possibly while ripped on psychedelic substances, I should wonder. Mr. Lyne also directed Flashdance, Fatal Attraction, Indecent Proposal and the 1997 version of Lolita, with Jeremy Irons, among other films.) Grades: drama: B; screenplay: D; portrayal of PTSD flashbacks: A (11/04)
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