Review of Jacob's Ladder (1990) by Jake C — 27 Oct 2018

Knowing the ending here really does spoil the experience of the movie, unlike with other mysteries, where long sought knowledge at last adds life to all that has just transpire-think of the likewise well-known revelations in CITIZEN KANE or PSYCHO, where the twist retroactively transforms what came before.

Here, what knowledge the viewer (and central character) come to in the end adds no life to the events, but rather releases Jacob Singer from life itself, frees him to finally die, and reveals the insubstantiality of the previous two hours, taking away what depth they seemed to have in all the confusion.

The problem is one of irony-the filmmakers may have learned a lot from Dante's Commedia, but they missed the crucial lesson about structure that Dante himself learned from the great tragedians-and because the film is so gloomy, so self-serious, so overwrought, it lacks any sense of irony, even in the dramatic sense, that would give closure despite ambiguity, and not just the finality of certainty.