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Jacob's Ladder
“Eckhart saw Hell too. He said: The only thing that burns in Hell is the part of you that won't let go of life, your memories, your attachments. They burn them all away. But they're not punishing you, he said. They're freeing your soul. So, if you're frightened of dying and you're holding on, you'll see devils tearing your life away. But if you've made your peace, then the devils are really angels, freeing you from the earth.” Thus says Louis (Danny Aiello), a philosophical chiropractor who reminds Jacob (Tim Robbins) of a kind-hearted angel as he works wonders on the Vietnam veteran’s back on a weekly basis. As Jacob was nearly killed in Vietnam, he spends a lot of time brooding over death and the afterlife, and perhaps he keeps returning to Louis not because he really needs a chiropractor, but because he needs the intellectual conversations to keep his emotionally-drained existence from being totally mundane. I’m sure that we’ve all thought about the afterlife—at least, I know I have. I’ve often wondered about the possibility of Hell, and what it is really like. I’m certainly not alone: Ever since Zoroaster suggested a different afterlife for the good and the evil, religious traditions have expanded on his ideas. Greek Mythology, of course, features Hades and the lost souls moving about mindlessly for all eternity. Jesus confirmed Zoroaster’s ideas and went on to call Hell a place of “weeping and gnashing of teeth.” The Book of Revelation describes it as a “lake of sulfur” intended for “the devil and his angels,” plus all those who do not repent of their sins. As Christianity spread throughout the world, this has certainly become the most archetypal interpretation. Theologians and philosophers have often interpreted the “lake of sulfur” description as metaphor for something far worse. Dante, of course, had his Inferno, which featured several layers of Hell, all of varying degrees of punishment. Shakespeare famously left Hell out of the picture altogether and sadly wrote, “Hell is empty, and all the devils are here.” Both George MacDonald and C.S. Lewis describe Hell as an existence devoid of Divine Power, which people willfully choose to go to when they don’t want to completely surrender themselves to God. Lewis in particular sees souls on a sort of eternal bus ride back and forth from Heaven to Hell, depending on who they choose to serve that day—God or themselves. Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot presented Hell as a sort of broken record, in which you replay the same meaningless day over and over again without any variation. The late Pope John Paul II, who is certainly an authority in such matters, once noted, "Damnation cannot be attributed to an initiative of God because in His merciful love He cannot want anything but the salvation of the beings He created. … [Hell is] a situation in which one finds oneself after freely and definitively withdrawing from God, the source of life and joy." Cinematic interpretations of Hell vary as much as literature. An episode of The Twilight Zone featured a gangster whose personal Hell becomes an eternity in which everything consistently goes right for him; his afterlife is thus quickly reduced to boredom. George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead and its sequels suggest that Hell is not only a never-ending, earthly apocalypse of flesh eating dead, but also mankind left to their sadistic devices in the midst of that chaos. Vincent Ward’s What Dreams May Come argues that we create our own realities in the afterlife; therefore, where we spend eternity depends upon our frame of mind. If we accept that we are dead and come to peace with that fact, we go to Heaven. If we cannot admit that we are dead and give into despair, we are doomed to Hell. Martin Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ features a pre-saintly Paul asking the recently resurrected Lazarus what Hell is like, and a detached Lazarus shrugs, “I was a little surprised. It really isn’t that much different than it is here.” The horror! Personally, I believe that Heaven and Hell are nothing more than an extension of what we experience on Earth. If we recognize that we will be held accountable for our actions and therefore choose to pursue God and surrender to love and goodness on Earth, we will continue to live in love and goodness in the afterlife. That’s Heaven. If we choose to live selfishly, do not want to be held accountable for our actions, and refuse to surrender to a higher power, then we will continue to live as thus in the afterlife, separated for everything that is good and left to fend for ourselves. That’s Hell. Either way, you choose which existence you want to have, and are essentially creating your own afterlife, whether it be one between you and God (Heaven) or you and yourself (Hell). I’m not sure if this idea stands up against any set, dogmatic theology, but it makes sense to me. What does all of this have to do with Jacob’s Ladder? Well, in a way, everything, though I refuse to disclose any further details about the film so that you can figure out exactly how this discussion ties in. In fact, I refuse to give another word to the plot or the characters, as it should be watched cold in order to best experience what it tries to do, and succeeds at doing. I will say that it is difficult to pigeonhole Jacob’s Ladder, which is incorrectly billed as a horror film. It certainly contains one of the most terrifying sequences that I have ever seen in a movie (you’ll know which one I’m talking about), yet the picture is overall too moody, too slow moving, and too philosophical to conjure up horror as a genre film generally would. More than anything else, Jacob’s Ladder is a fantasy, but I could perhaps just as easily classify it as a drama, a war film, a thriller, and a theological film. That is succeeds in being all of these things proves its worth—that it is impossible to categorize puts in on the plain of other brilliant oddities like The Sweet Hereafter, The Princess Bride, Highlander, and perhaps Bubba Ho Tep. Simply put, it is what it is. The reason it is so effective, for me anyway, it because of the way director Adrian Lyne and writer Bruce Joel Rubin visualize Hell and speculate on its reasons for existence. I admit that this article discusses various interpretations of Hell more than it does Jacob’s Ladder, but it is the film itself which stirred me, for the first time in my life, to ask such questions and do such research on the matter. I am not alone in these convictions: In his review of The Jacket, Roger Ebert said, “I have been meaning to view [Jacob’s Ladder] again after the Rev. Andrew Greeley told me he thinks it's one of the most spiritual films of our time.” Such a recommendation from Greeley is perhaps a more poignant recommendation than anything I could add. As I have chosen to leave any details of Jacob’s Ladder, there is not much more to add here. The film is all at once haunting, moving, disturbing, nightmarish, surreal, disorienting, and terrifying. All of the actors are top notch, and it contains visuals that will never leave me. In retrospect, I do not believe that it ever really comes together as a coherent whole, and perhaps the final scenes are rushed and underdeveloped. But for the thought that Jacob’s Ladder provoked in me, and for the very brilliance of its images and ideas, the film emerges out of its shortcomings and climbs to greatness. It’s definitely not for the squeamish; otherwise, you shouldn’t miss this one. Cast: A TriStar Pictures release of a Carolco Pictures film. Directed by Adrian Lyne. Written by Bruce Joel Rubin. Rated R, for disturbing images, violence, language, and some sexuality/nudity. Running time: 115 minutes. Original United States theatrical release date: November 2, 1990. Questions? Comments? E-mail me: danel_the_tinman@hotmail.com |
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