The first time I watched "Jacob's Ladder," I almost sensed that everything the nervous, twitching, emotionally drained Jacob Singer was enduring was real and present. You want to believe that he did not die from his wounds in Vietnam and led a life as a post office worker in New York City and lived in a dingy apartment with his girlfriend. You want to believe all that. After seeing it again recently in quite some time, I knew what to expect and yet I didn't. I still wanted to believe Jacob had a somewhat normal life despite seeing fleshy tails in homeless people in the subway or demons looking and staring at him from behind subway doors or in hallways or at parties. That is what makes "Jacob's Ladder" worth revisiting often because you still hold hope for Jacob and that he recovers from his trauma and his fear of being dead and that he is, as he says to some doctors, alive.
Tim Robbins is essentially the perfect actor to play a tormented, sweet, caring man who was once married, possibly returned from Vietnam though not unscathed from injuries and is possibly living with the equally caring Jezebel (Elizabeth Peña), his girlfriend he presumably knows from work. But there is something unsettling happening to Jacob. He has unrelenting visions of demons with heads that shake violently. Sometimes Jacob needs an adjustment from his saintly chiropractor (Danny Aiello) whom he refers to as an "overgrown cherub." Sometimes it is spurts of uncommon joy from listening to teenage girls in the street corner singing "Mr. Postman" or dancing briefly with Jezebel at a party. Jacob, though, has recurring nightmares and sometimes we are not sure if he is remembering his wife or if he's still with Jezebel or still in Vietnam being rescued by helicopter. Is he truly dead and if he just sees the demons as angels, can he proceed to Heaven with some inner peace? Will he get past the accidental death of one of his sons (Macaulay Culkin)?
"Jacob's Ladder" is a frightening, captivating journey of a man's probable descent into madness or a death-like paralysis before he climbs up to the heavens. Aiello is the saintly Louis who cares so much about Jacob that he cannot bear to see him in the hospital after Jacob hurt his back. Peña is the no-nonsense girlfriend who cannot bear to see Jacob cry and wants to nurture him back to health. Patricia Kalember as Sarah, the wife that Jaccob presumably divorced, shows such a gentle, understanding woman that she may as well have a halo. We also get fleeting glimpses of Jacob's Army pals (Ving Rhames, Eriq La Salle, Pruitt Taylor Vince) who also see some of these demonic visions - they want to sue the Army for possible drug experimentation while in Vietnam. Stylishly directed by Adrian Lyne, "Jacob's Ladder" is heavy-going yet it is often stirring, haunting, poetic (16mm footage is used in flashbacks; the billowing smoke from the New York streets; the dingy apartment that still looks inviting; Macaulay Culkin's cherubic face and smile especially at the end; the blood-stained hallways of an underground hospital) and has truly eerie close-ups of Robbins in various states of distress especially when he's endlessly strapped to beds. It is a New York City fervent nightmare of a movie but there are rich rewards for those who stick with it till the end.
