The
Lunatic Fringe
Jacobs sings a desperate plea to a purgatory of
terminal reality where demons stalk the lunatic fringe. His voice echoes
through the valley of death where seemingly malignant forces conspire to tear
away the last vestiges of his humanity: Jacob has finally reached the last rung
of sanity unable to attain the gentle light, devoured by foreboding darkness.
Director Adrian Lynne has crafted a psychological
horror film ripe with religiosity, that vast conundrum between faith and reason.
The narrative is told on three levels of perception: it begins in Vietnam
before transitioning to what seems to be present tense, interspersed with
flashbacks to his life before the war: we are befuddled by memories within memories.
Haunting images of the sun peeking through the jungle canopy like the
all-seeing eye of a fierce god spying Jacob’s innards spilt upon the ground
creates a paranoid allusion in the “real world” where grotesque Boschian
nightmares relentlessly pursue him. Lynne films these creatures in distorted
ways, utilizing slow camera speeds, POV angles, and flash-cuts but he hides
these images in mundane routine: this sudden transgression of the impossible is
frightening and unsettling.
Lyne uses a wonderful aural transition from the
first sequence to Jacob’s new reality: as he lies dying in Vietnam his scream
merges with the screech of a subway train. Chiaroscuro shadows create a
disjunctive feeling as Jacob seemingly wakes from a dream, Camus’ book THE STRANGER
clutched in a palsied hand. He encounters a passenger who seems vacant though
perceptive, her dark eyes could be full of venom but she ignores Jacob’s simple
questions. The sound of the train plummeting through dark tunnels, the
interplay of light and shadow, the dilapidated condition of the train (with a
close-up of an anti-drug sign which reads Hell) and the withdrawn passenger all
contribute to the suspense. As Jacob is stepping from the train he sees a
homeless person curled up on the seat asleep and we’re shown a quick POV shot
of an obscene tail quickly hidden from view. Jacob hesitates, scared: did he
(we) just see that? What’s brilliant is that we feel Jacob’s fear but it is
amorphous and unfocused. Are we seeing reality from his paranoid perception or
omnisciently?
As the paranoid “fantasies” become more intense, we
are left to consider which of the three narratives is the most likely. Even the
final act’s exposition is called in to question when considered. If he’s dying
in Vietnam and the entire film is a death-dream then he must be imagining the
conversation with the chemist. But how could Jacob know this information to
dream it in the first place? It would be future knowledge unknown to the Jacob
dying in Vietnam. The mind can recall and create the most interesting fantasies
so it could be Jacob’s logic trying to make sense of a world which is quickly
diminishing. After all, he is a very intelligent person who desires to complete
(or does so, depending on which reality you suppose) his PHD in Philosophy. So
the whole drug experiment is a concoction of his brain trying to make sense out
of this madness.
But there is another more frightening implication:
that Jacob’s soul enters Hell. If so, then Louis his chiropractor takes the
place of Virgil trying to lead him from the Inferno. Jacob also suffers burning
by ice which is only found in Dante’s tempestuous realm. Jacob is now enamored
with Jezebel, a woman who could be a “false prophet” meaning she is something
other than she seems. Is she a demon trying to imprison him in Hell? Or is she
an angel trying to set him free? This “reality” then is inhabited by others who
die so there are lost souls among the demons. For instance, he encounters
fellow soldiers suffering the same fate and experiencing the same paranoia;
these then are lost souls hoping for freedom. And they likely find it before
Jacob who is held in this stasis by his inability to let go of life. I find
this interpretation terrifying (in context of film, I personally don’t believe
in religion) because Jacob finds himself being “punished” for no other reason
than that obscene Christian doctrine of Original Sin. Jacob is guiltless: a
good person, father, husband as depicted in the pre-Vietnam “flashbacks”…so why
does he deserve this pain?
Competing narratives lead to competing
interpretations and this imbues the film with an unsettling and disturbing
tension as we attempt to understand what Jacob does not. If this is a
“death-dream” then it is exactly what a professor of philosophy steeped in
Catholic dogma would imagine. On the other hand, if it’s an objective
destination then how terrifying that this learned professor cannot identify it!
The film ends with a proclamation that the US Army
did indeed use drug experiments on soldiers and civilians during the Vietnam
War. It’s exhibited as an omniscient title card after the movie fades to black,
a statement outside of the meta-narrative. What is the purpose of this
confounding information? The drug hypothesis is questionably a figment of Jacob’s
imagination and, even if true contextually within the narrative, contributes
little or nothing towards the film’s resolution especially when considered from
the character’s point-of-view. One possibility is that it purges Jacob of any
guilt over his death and places it firmly in the hands of the faceless
Government. In other words, the entire film is a metaphor for our Government as
Evil Entity dominating its guiltless citizens who are born into a corrupt
system beyond their control or understanding. Fascinating to consider, JACOB’S
LADDER can be experienced multiple times and reward each viewing with new
perspectives.
Final Cut: (B+)
