Tim Robbins is Jacob Singer, a Vietnam war veteran, a mentally unstable one at that. A bayonet pierces his side during the war, but his consciousness soldiered on in some unfamiliar mode. Has he died? We don't know for sure. Horned creatures begin to terrorize him. Interesting territory is explored. Just how is our consciousness going to adjust after death? Do we have any idea? Are we going to notice? Assuming we don't have a good clue because we're really old. How long will it take for our consciousness to catch up, to realize it's dead, assuming there is a hereafter, and if there is, there's a limbo, a no man's land, not quite Heaven, but not quite Hell. It's almost like the long, swift sucking sensation you get when you go down a steep water slide, or maybe the feeling you get when you just clear the edge of a gigantic waterfall: you're no longer on the river; but you're not where the waterfall meets the water down below.
That's sort of where Jocob might be. Little things begin to break through. He swears he sees a lizard-like tail squirm beneath a homeless man. Hideous faces that look like melting wax roam slowly just behind passing car windows. During a scene, Jacob's chiropractor quotes the Christian mystic Meister Eckhart:
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.'
Jacob's Ladder is what Jacob is supposed to be on, the ladder being a meeting place between Heaven and Hell. But 'the Ladder' also has another meaning: it was an experimental drug given to American soldiers during Vietnam, and without their knowing. The drug made a short-cut to a person's urge for primal rage. It's a ladder leading down to that part of the psyche. New revelations about the drug shed light on the mystery of Jacob's alleged death!
I had always wanted to watch this as a child; however, the rating prohibited it. I picked it up after our conversation and I was blown away! It does present an interesting portrait of one of the great mysteries of life for a Believer or non-believer: what awaits? Not the end game, but what awaits in those moments following our death? Are we instantly on the cartilage of Heaven? Or, is there some dispossession of our lives? If we are ready to leave, will we see the process of disgorgement as deifying?
ReplyDeleteI meant "curtilage of Heaven?".
ReplyDeleteMatt
ReplyDeleteI'm so glad you saw it. And I'm so sorry for my laxity in getting to your movies. Maybe that will happen over Christmas Exodus. You're right. This movie does give a unique perspective on the question of 'what awaits us?' in that 'undiscovered country'. Lewis said that if there are pains in purgatory, that they will be more desirable than any of the black pleasures we find here on Earth. This goes back to the point that Heaven and Hell, from the standpoint of our consciousness, is largely a matter of perspective. In Jacob's case, if he 'made his peace', he - or we - would invite the angels 'freeing us from Earth', all 'worldly attachments'. But if you haven't made your peace, this same 'tearing' sensation is caused by 'devils' 'tearing your life away'. Of course, angels don't turn into devils on the whim of one's perspective; but perhaps depending on the perspective, an angel or a demon would be doing the 'freeing' or the 'tearing', even though the sensation of it being painful is the same. It's just that depending on the perspective, the sensation would have a different meaning.