Jacob's_Ladder_(film)

Jacob's Ladder (film)

Jacob's Ladder is a 1990 psychological horror film directed by Adrian Lyne, based on a screenplay by Bruce Joel Rubin. It stars Tim Robbins, Elizabeth Peña, Danny Aiello, and Jason Alexander. Actor Macaulay Culkin appears briefly in an uncredited performance that predates his wider fame.

Plot

The film opens on October 6 1971. Jacob Singer (Tim Robbins) is a U.S. soldier in the Mekong Delta, Vietnam. Helicopters pass overhead, carrying supplies for what appears to be preparation for a big Viet Cong offensive. Without any warning, Jacob's unit comes under fire. The soldiers try to take cover, but begin to exhibit strange behavior for no apparent reason. Jacob tries to escape the unexplained insanity, only to be bayonetted by an unseen enemy.

The film shifts between Vietnam, to Jacob's memories (and delusions) of his son Gabe (Macaulay Culkin, uncredited) and former wife Sarah (Patricia Kalember), to his present (this timeframe is set in 1977) relationship with a woman named Jezebel (Elizabeth Peña) in New York City. During this time, Jacob faces several threats to his life and has severe hallucinatory experiences. It is revealed that his son Gabe was hit by a car and killed while Jacob was in Vietnam.

Jacob's friend and chiropractor Louis (Danny Aiello) states the main thematic point of the film: in effect, hell is really purgatory, and those who are ready to let go of their lives do not find the experience 'hellish'. It is at this point in the movie that Louis cites the 14th century Christian mystic Meister Eckhart.

As the hallucinations become increasingly bizarre, Jacob learns about chemical experiments performed on U.S. soldiers in Vietnam. His surviving platoon-mates confess to Jacob that they have been seeing horrible hallucinations as well. Jacob loses an army buddy in a car-ignition explosion while reaching down to pick up a quarter. Jacob is then approached by a man named Michael Newman (Matt Craven), who claims to have been a chemist working with the Army's chemical warfare division in Saigon where he worked on creating a drug that would increase aggression in soldiers. Tests of the drug (code-named "The Ladder" in reference to the effect) were first given to monkeys and then to a group of enemy POWs, with gruesome results. Later small doses of "The Ladder" were given to Jacob's unit, through the platoons' C-rations. However, instead of targeting the enemy, the men in Jacob's unit attacked each other indiscriminately.

We finally learn that Jacob never made it out of Vietnam; the entire series of experiences turns out to have been a dying hallucination. Jacob's experiences appear to have been a form of purgation in which he releases himself from his earthly attachments, finally joining his dead son Gabe to ascend a staircase toward a bright light.

At the end of the film, a message states that the U.S. Army allegedly experimented with a hallucinogenic drug called BZ, but the Pentagon denies it.

Evaluation

"The Ladder"

Jacob is told that the horrific events he experienced on his final day in Vietnam were the product of an experimental drug called "The Ladder", which was used on troops without their knowledge. This is an ambiguous element in the film, particularly since Jacob is given the information by a character in his own imagination. He is told that the drug was named for its ability to cause "a fast trip straight down the ladder, right to the primal fear, right to the base anger," although the name "The Ladder" also has a metaphorical and religious significance beyond this, which is relevant to Jacob's predicament: it is notable that he ends his hallucination on a staircase.

At the end of the film, a message is displayed mentioning the testing of a drug named BZ, NATO code for a deliriant and hallucinogen known as 3-quinuclidinyl benzilate that was rumored to have been administered to U.S. troops by the government in a secret attempt to increase their fighting power. The effects of BZ, however, are different from the effects of the drug depicted in the film.

Innovative effects

Director Adrian Lyne uses a body horror technique in which an actor is recorded waving his head around at a low frame rate, resulting in horrific fast motion when played back. Filmmakers have since achieved the effect by digitally removing frames from footage shot at a normal rate.

The horror videogame franchise Silent Hill borrows this technique in the second, third and fourth sequels of the game, although it is not seen in the Silent Hill movie. Other films to use the "fast-head" motion include Stir of Echoes, Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery, The Ring, Oldboy, Trauma (2004), House on Haunted Hill (1999), Lost Highway, Lost Souls, The Amityville Horror (2005), The Deaths of Ian Stone, and the Saw series, as well as the videogame Thief: Deadly Shadows.

The effect also appears in an episode of the television series Supernatural and in the The X-Files episode "Requiem". The music video for "Stupify" by Disturbed, the Linkin Park song "Papercut", "Payback" by Flaw, Marilyn Manson's cover of "Personal Jesus", "UHF" by Weird Al Yankovic and "Sober" by Tool also use the technique.

Antecedents

The movie's events are a dying hallucination related by an unreliable narrator. Director Robert Enrico used a similar structure for his 1962 film short An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge, based on Ambrose Bierce's 1886 short story, and which appeared on American television as a 1964 episode of the fantasy-anthology series The Twilight Zone. A similar dying hallucination occurs in the short story The South.

The film is also viewed by many, including the screenwriter, as a modern interpretation of Bardo Thodol, the Tibetan Book of the Dead.