I have to reveal the ending of Jacob's Ladder in order to discuss this film in any depth. Consider this your spoiler warning then.

When I first saw Jacob's Ladder, I have to admit that I wasn't very impressed. I was bored, dear reader: the filmmakers had held out so long on the goods that they lost me. I was abruptly awakened from my slumber by the surprise twist ending, which was startling enough for me to give the film a mild recommendation. It is one of the few twist endings that can actually be said to make the film. (The Sixth Sense really didn't do it for me I'm afraid, and neither did the still-excellent The Usual Suspects. Rather frustratingly, many reviewers didn't see Jacob's Ladder as possessing a twist ending.) This second time, I can't say that I was bored with any of the film, but I wasn't startled with the twist ending anymore either. My reaction wasn't as stratified this time around; rather, my feelings were more... consistently mixed. The heat of the twist dissipated into the body of the picture. Knowing how the film turns out gives every image and event a needed weight that it was sorely lacking before, but it also provides a sense of clarity that allows us to see how silly the thing ultimately is. Jacob's Ladder is a different film the second time around, but it's not necessarily a better one.

Speaking simply in experiential terms, I think that my palate may have grown more sophisticated in between viewings of Jacob's Ladder. I can appreciate the speckling of nightmarish imagery as much if not more than a full serving. Very early in the film we see a train go by that may or may not be filled with demons and monsters. It goes by too quickly for us to find out. Director Adrian Lyne says this technique is meant to make you think that what you are not seeing is much worse than what you are seeing. In more profound terms, the technique caused me to meditate on the limitations of the cinema as communication. Consider that had we seen what Jacob had seen with our own eyes, there is the possibility that we would have been able to detect if the train was filled with demons and monsters! At 24 frames a second, the cinema is unable to detect the subtleties of light and movement that the human eye can.

While I am far from a brilliant writer, and I am far from having complete mastery over the English language, it frustrates me that there seem to be many concepts and ideas that we can't seem to say. To borrow an obvious example, there is no gender-neutral pronoun. Except "it,” I suppose, but the word has a distinctly dehumanizing connotation. One can not be an "it,” one may only be a "he" or a "she.” "His/her" is far too cumbersome. The use of one or the other is no good either, not as much for the practice's politically incorrect roots in the patriarchy, but because when I want a gender-neutral pronoun, I want a gender-neutral pronoun! I want to say what I want to say, how I want to say it. The use of "their" seemed rather eloquent, but the grammar Nazis have said no. How does one change language orthodoxy anyway? Even more bothersome for me as a writer, a problem that I face time and time again, is that not every adjective has a proper verb form! You know, when you make something black you "blacken" it, but what do you say when you want to make something childish? (I faced the problem when writing my review of Return of the Jedi.) Again, if there is a solution it is a solution that either changes the meaning of what it is we are trying to say, or gives the language a cumbersome weight that destroys its rhythm. The scary suggestion here is that there are perhaps ideas and concepts that cannot be readily communicated! I apologize if this is beginning to sound like a New Yorker column, but I want to emphasize that the fast-moving visuals, this train sequence in particular, are visual equivalents to a gender-neutral pronoun. Lyne is unsuccessfully communicating to us visually. Unsuccessful because the communication of these ideas is impossible.

I think that that first time I saw Jacob's Ladder, I was going in expecting to see a non-narrative film. If this were to be a non-narrative film, it needed stronger set pieces. The spook visuals hardly ever exist for their own sake, really; director Adrian Lyne uses them so sparingly that they develop, for the most part, to create a mood and atmosphere that is at service to the plot and the characters. (By non-narrative film, I suppose that I'm saying a film where the narrative is not the focal concern of the viewer.) Expecting one thing and getting another is sure to leave one disappointed and so this next time I knew that I was not going to see a non-narrative film, but a non-non-narrative film, i.e a narrative film. Conversations about narrative vs. non-narrative are somewhat more complex than they sound when applied to Jacob's Ladder. Consider that the twist ending indicates that the entire film was one man's dying thoughts, but the film follows Jacob from being blind to what is happening to understanding it fully. As for that question as to whether or not Jacob's Ladder is narrative or non-narrative, I think that I can better answer the question in saying that it is a narrative film that is superficially non-narrative. The narrative runs deeply enough to disappoint those looking for a non-narrative film.

A week or two ago I found myself on some strange Armond White kick. I am not quite sure what the hell it was that had me interested in the man. Anyway, looking through my Netflix queue, I saw that The Fury was down there in the middle. Remembering that White had described its ending as "an orgasm" and as the greatest ending in the history of cinema, I thought that I had best take a look at it. When The Fury got to its ending, I was shocked to find that White was being literal in describing it as an orgasm. I thought that I had missed something; I mean, that couldn't have been all there is, could it? It's not the greatest ending of all time. I mean, okay, you can say fuck off to 2001: A Space Odyssey and The Shining if you must, but say fuck off to The Passion of Joan of Arc? Intolerance? Both films made White's Sight and Sound top ten list of the best films of all time, and both films are far, far more deserving candidates of the title "greatest ending of all time.” The orgasm ending of The Fury, it's purely an orgasm in visual terms. A significant blow to White's critical capacities, it seems, that when I think of an orgasm I think of it as representing a state of clarity, White only sees it as representing his dick exploding. Jacob's Ladder has a truly orgasmic ending, in that the ending represents a state of clarity. In ranking the greatest endings of all time, it may be closer to the bottom of the list, but it's certainly in the company of the greats. As the ending is an orgasm, the structure of the rest of the film is sexual. It starts out more or less ordinarily (straight-forward narrative) but gradually heats up (freed from narrative). There comes a point where the hero Jacob (a surrogate for the audience or vice versa, as this is an extremely subjective film) thinks he is about to "come” but distracts himself, he comes back to just sex. When he finally allows himself to peak, the film detaches itself from reality, and finishes with that moment of clarity. As with Passion of Joan of Arc, 2001: A Space Odyssey and The Shining, it is sexual climax, spiritual rapture and death all rolled into one: the flesh manifesting itself into a state of pure energy.

Unlike Passion of Joan of Arc, 2001: A Space Odyssey and The Shining, the filmmakers do not give us any buildup to the peak. It's all Star Child and no Star Gate. Could we still say that Jacob's Ladder ends with an orgasm? I think so. The thing is, the ending seems to have the nature of an orgasm without the form of an orgasm. At the end of the film the experience is one of utter contentment; you're floating and oblivious to all that is surrounding you. But there is none of that intensely explosive burning pleasure leading up to this state. What the filmmakers have done is given us an orgasm without making us come. The coming, the moments of "pure cinema,” are all sanctioned within moments of false clarity. In seeing these monsters, Jacob instinctively thinks that he is seeing what really is. These demons are really illusions, however. The pathway to heaven is a peaceful one, void of violent conflict; achieving higher consciousness does not actively involve the destruction of the flesh. The film suggests that the moment of clarity comes about more like a piece of photographic paper being submerged in developing fluid than it does as a painful/"orgasmic" (as in coming) rebirth. I think that the film has a distrust of "pure cinema,” a sort of hatred for it really, but still sees it as a bit of a kinky turn-on. It seems to want to exploit the aesthetic possibilities of pure cinema while professing its fidelity to static minimalism. I mean, in omitting the Star Gate sequence it seems that the film wants to score some sort of point against the cinema. The filmmakers see the cinema -- that is, lighting, editing, puppetry, music and the like -- as representing artifice. They see spiritual truth as being decidedly acinematic, in dry Bresson/Antonioni terms, and at no point will give us an elaborate set piece to depict a positive end (as those other three films did). Undeniably, however, the elaborate set pieces used to depict "hell" are incredibly exhilarating, suggesting that the filmmakers don't quite have the restraint and/or the talent to make this material successful on their supposedly favored minimalist terms.

Watching Jacob's Ladder I realized that I have a very deep hatred and prejudice for the screenwriter Bruce Joel Rubin. His most famous film (aside from this, I guess) was Ghost, which he won the Academy Award for. My mother loved Ghost and so I grew up thinking that it was an okay movie. A few years ago, I watched it and realized that it was terrible. Really really terrible. I mean really really REALLY terrible. Brainless, is what it is, like it was bourne from the mind of an understimulated Red State housewife. The spiritual and material world is explicitly stratified into good and evil, heaven and hell, with nothing in between. Patrick Swayze doesn't come back to kill those who wronged him, but they end up dying anyway, tricked by Swayze's spooky presence, allowing the audience to satiate their primal revenge fantasies while letting the hero off the hook morally. Oh, and black women are hilarious and adorable, as long as they more or less stay away from our white women. (Infamously, Swayze possesses Whoopi Goldberg and makes out with his living wife (played by Demi Moore), but instead of seeing Whoopi with Moore, the filmmakers have Swayze performing with her instead, making everything smooth and comfortable for the undemanding dipshits in the audience.) The dialogue is also shitty and condescendingly overly expositionary throughout. Jacob's Ladder is certainly an improvement for Rubin, but one can still tell that the two films came from the same pen. The film is similarly condescending and overly expositionary; Rubin wants to make sure that we get the point. Jacob's chiropractor (?!), played by Danny Aiello, explains to him what is happening, and we hear Aiello on voiceover at the end of the film, just so we understand exactly what has happened and why. Rubin doesn't have an ear for hard-boiled dialogue. After Jacob dies, we see the military doctors peel their finger condoms off and sigh, "Son of a bitch put up a hell of a fight.” I have to say I blushed, thinking back to high school creative writing class where my stories were no doubt filled with pretentiously unpretentious bullshit lines just like that.

In the surprisingly juicy featurette that accompanies the Artisan Special Edition release, Rubin talks about how he was pressured by the studio (and possibly the director) to add the role of Jacob's deceased son in order to give Jacob's salvation a "human face.” Aside from a brief moment where Jacob utters a sardonic "oh shit (you're making me get out of bed to do this?)" when asked to tuck the kid in, their relationship is unrelentingly saccharine. The son is played by Macaulay Culkin, who yes, did in fact score some time later that year with Home Alone. As a child actor Culkin is adorable, but is fortunately untalented enough to counter that fact. Had this been young Miko Hughes, the movie probably would have been unbearable; Culkin's utter lack of talent keeps the character as a bit of a cipher, never really transforming into a formal cartoon. But still, they lay it on pretty damn thick. Rubin shoehorns a scene where Jacob's ex-wife has sent him a stack of old photos and when suddenly confronted with a wallet-sized portrait of his dead son, Jacob breaks down. Even worse, we get a gratuitous flashback where he sees the boy picking up a baseball card he dropped as he is walking his bike, and then abruptly getting smashed by an oncoming car. We don't see young Culkin actually getting killed, we just see his bicycle being totaled: a vivid ("tasteful"?) metaphor for how his days of snips and snails and puppy dog tails have been cut tragically short. Ugh! A bigger problem, or at least a stickier one, than the retention of the Ghost-esque schmaltz, is the nature and the depth of Rubin's Message. Rubin's original conception for portraying Jacob's salvation was to have his girlfriend Jezzie transform into a glassy-eyed version of himself. An arty English Lit 1010 steal from Empire Strikes Back, this scene is, of course, much worse than the Macaulay Culkin one. It is very tempting to credit Adrian Lyne for the fact that Jacob's Ladder works at all; had Rubin been behind the lens the picture could have very well spun into the realms of laughable pretentiousness.

The lesson that Jacob learns in the film is that these demons he sees are only demons if he doesn't want to leave his life. If he accepts his death, they will turn into angels and will take him to heaven. This is the lesson that Lou the Chiropractor (I swear to God, that's his real fucking name) discloses to Jacob, and this is the lesson Rubin believes we need repeated to us at the end of the film. Like Ghost, Rubin wants us to understand that we have to accept death or we will suffer. Um, OK, but do we have to die? And if heaven is so great, what is so good about living? Theologically, Rubin seems to be peddling placation over any solid ethical framework. Lyne closes out the DVD featurette by mentioning how some AIDS support organizations have approached him wanting to use some of the film's "imagery" (?) for their groups. Thinking of Jacob's Ladder in terms of AIDS support groups is useful in interpreting where Rubin is coming from. Fitting the easy audio/visual description of a New York intellehomosextual, one can easily picture him as having a personal background knowledge of the AIDS explosion. Jacob's Ladder is a deeply nihilistic film; it sees death as an unavoidable fact, that there is nothing we can do but let go of life and embrace death. This may be the reason why, despite its ethereal ending, Jacob's Ladder is regarded (and revered) by many as a downer. At the heart of the film, it denies the possibility of survival. I may venture to say that had it been made later than 1990, the AIDS community would probably not have had much use for it. Maybe it was just the passage of time that cooled things off, or probably even more likely there have been better drugs and treatments that have made living with HIV or even AIDS possible or even tolerable. As a pro-euthanasia tract, the philosophical backbone of Jacob's Ladder seems to date it for the worst.

The HIV virus is, of course, spread largely through promiscuity. Were gay men more promiscuous than people of a different sexual orientation? It seems so. The cause behind this promiscuity could be blamed toward both the right and the left of America. The right has always seemed to have one narrowly defined concept of what is moral and what is immoral. The left, not wanting to be narrowly defined, has no concept at all of what is moral and what is immoral. The problem is that when you are told that it is shameful to be gay, you'll sanction your sexual behavior in anonymous impersonal terms. On the other hand, when you're told that it is not shameful to be gay, it gets to be that there is never a time when your sexuality can be shameful. You see under the right, one partner or ten is equally immoral; under the left, one partner or ten is equally moral. We need to get the point where it is an accepted norm for every family to have two parents who have hopefully waited until marriage to have sex, but where "two parents" can mean either same-sex or opposite-sex. After every revolution one should come up with a new, hopefully better set of rules. The concept of rules themselves are not the problem.

Back to Jacob's Ladder: The film's political content is characteristic of the seventies, where the freedoms won in the ‘60s turned into anarchy. In the film this isn't an issue of sex as much as drugs (as it was in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas), but it's short work to make the substitution. The political (that is to say secular) explanation of Jacob's visions is a smokescreen, a red herring, bullshit in context to the plot of the movie, but thematically there is something to it. Jacob is told that he has his visions because a hippy chemist was hired to come up with a hallucinogen that would make the soldiers fight harder, an attempt to counter the plummeting morale and growing cowardice induced by the unwinnable Vietnam War. Jacob was, of course, one of the soldiers who was experimented upon. Why did this hippy chemist take the job for the army? They had caught him making acid and he was facing twenty years. This was part of his plea bargain. Party's over, man.

Superficially, Jacob's Ladder is a film about the downhill slope from excess, an environment that fostered the AIDS explosion. AIDS may also explain the film's fear of cinema. The fear of cinema is based on a fear of sex. Rubin's brand of spirituality is one of New Age Buddhist gobbledy-gook filtered through goofball Catholic iconology. These don't really go together: he is saying that life is pain and dying is relief, which seems to be a gross misreading of both Catholic and Buddhist teaching. But never mind, what Rubin seems to be saying that we must overcome the bodily orgasm and orgasm through the soul and mind. Again, I'm not sure that it was a mistake to describe Jacob's Ladder in terms of a sex act; I can't think of any better way to describe it. But he divorces spirituality from sex (again unlike the greats: 2001, The Shining, Passion of Joan of Arc and Eraserhead, I forgot Eraserhead. Let's throw in Altered States as well, which out DePalmas DePalma in its wicked pop-savvy deconstruction of this subgenre). Rubin feels a need to make the separation; he has it in his head that sex is destructive. AIDS has scared him celibate. And so the film, as a result, doesn't quite have the charge that it should. Jacob's Ladder is undeniably nihilistic, but I wonder if that would be a problem if it wasn't also moralistic and resolutely anti-pleasure.