"Jacob's Ladder" with Tim Robbins - Junk or Genius?

[UdoKier]

Is it an unforgettable masterpiece, or manipulative dreck?

[Melodybe]

1. Both, the movie had very brilliant moments but sadly was

quite uneven

[Droopy]

2. Gotta go with genius

That flick like totally blew my mind!

Seriously, that is one cool film. It's one of the few movies I've watched more than once, although it's been a long time.

[UdoKier]

3. A lot of interesting symbolism you see on on second viewing (SPOILERS)

Like Jezzie (his own ego creation, clinging to life) throwing away all his photos

And the fact that that in spite of being gored with a bayonet in Vietnam, he has no scars at all in his "later life" in New York.

[Droopy]

4. Yup

It's one of those movies that will make you go :wtf: until you've seen it a few times. After a few viewings I took the film to have a strong eastern philosophy influence.

[mikehiggins]

5. Paid good bucks to see a Twilight Zone episode on the big

screen. Robbins was good but the story? Just another story of a guy's fantasies at the moment of death.

[ghostsofgiants]

6. Probably my all-time favourite horror film.

[shoopnyc123]

7. Great movie...

...AND I have a crush on TIM!

[SarahB]

8. I know I never should have seen it.

Back in November 1990, when my now husband (soon to be ex-husband) were "dating", we went to that movie. In the movie, Tim's wife is named Sarah. There's a scene where Tim says, "I love you, Sarah." That was the segue for him to say it to me. In all that hindsight business, we shouldn't have taken our relationship to that next step and gotten so mushy and emotional. All it seemed to lead to is me getting snapped at for 14 years. That's all I remember about that movie except for a few weird, creepy things.

[UdoKier]

16. That is a weird segue.

Since in the movie, he's supposedly separated from Sarah, bunking with Jezebel...

[dolo amber]

9. The end of that movie

makes it my all time most hated movie ever. I wanted to kill people. :grr:

[DS1]

10. The movie had nothing to do with that.

You always want to kill people, it's what brings us together :pals:

[dolo amber]

11. Bwahahaheeheehee

:toast: :7

[UdoKier]

12. That made you pissed? (SPOILERS)

The fact that he was dying throughout the movie? The director kept giving you clues, OVER and OVER again - cutting from his "real" life to the traumatic flashbacks of Vietnam, the creepy doctor and the fortuneteller BOTH told him he was DEAD, and he kept refusing to admit it.

The fact that Jacob was dead at the end was NOT a "twist" a la Shyamalan. The filmmakers wanted you to go through the process of dying and letting go along with the character, and that included his powerful denial and NEED to be "normal" and "home" and with family. The audience identifies with that emotion strongly, and that's why so many in the audience can't accept that he's dead until the end.

It's a film about an emotional process, not a logical narrative. It play out in that format, because a literal film adaptation of the dream-state the character would actually be in wouldn't work as a film.

i vote for brilliant, and nobody could have been better in this film than Robbins. He MAKES the film.

[Mojambo]

13. I've actually never seen it.

I'll have to pick it up one of these days.

[Guaranteed]

14. I thought it was very effective.

I tend to judge movies mostly in that regard, and on character development.

Does the movie get across what it's trying to get across? How do you feel, leaving the theater?

Great movie.

[American Tragedy]

15. To me it was unforgettable, poignant, almost impossible to describe.

After I watched it, I spent the rest of the day just wandering around contemplating. That movie still haunts me. Terrifying in the beginning and devastating in the end. It was not perfect but it hit me very hard on a personal level.

I've never talked about Jacob's Ladder to anyone else. I don't know if I will even be able to watch it again for years to come.



Incidentally, I never found it to be nearly as cryptic as others had claimed that it was. Once I had seen the entire film, most of the narrative seemed agonizingly clear to me.

[Mike Niendorff]

17. stunning film.

Without question one of the best films I've ever seen.


MDN