Edit: No spoilers in this post, but there are some further down in the thread now. . .

OK, I just saw this movie based on so many recommendataions that it was a heady, disturbing movie with a twist ending that you think about for months afterward.

Now normally I'm not one to figure out twist endings, but I guessed this one about five minutes into the move (the train scene). Beyond that, I didn't find the movie confusing; they gave us plenty to go on throughout and wrapped it all up at the end. As for disturbing, well it certainly had some distrubing imagery- but it all made sense with the plot.

Did I enjoy the move? Yeah, it was pretty good. Probably won't watch it again, but it was worth one time through. Will I be thinking about it for months? No way- it wasn't that thought provoking.

Just wondering what other people here thought about it- am I just wierd or were some of you alsoe non-plussed?

On a side note, I watched Memento again as a kind of double header, and boy that's a great movie. I think that must have been the fifth time through and I still loved every minute of it.

Jeff

Here's my take on this...

I love Jacob's Ladder. But then, I saw it when it came out. Is it as impressive now? Sort of. Sure it's lost some of its shocking, disturbing nature, but then the Sega Genesis isn't really all that impressive anymore either. But, like Jacob's Ladder, it IS still a hell of a lot of fun.

For some reason this thread makes me think of the comedian Jim Gaffigan and "Heat"...

I've recently adopted a new policy on movies. The more people tell me about it, the less chance there is I'll see it. I try and know as little as possible going in... because the less I expect, the more I'll probably like it. It's worked out well so far... I seem to be enjoying more movies than ever before =]. If people had built up Jacob's Ladder a ton before the first time I'd seen it, I'd probably be right in line with ya. Good movie either way, especially when framed in time context.

is there anyway to do spoiler tags on this forum? I want to mention about how much it reminds me of another movie, but I don't want to give away the ending....

*SPOILER ALERT* ? I think most people would get that.

You could make the text the same color as the typical background (for those who haven't changed it), requiring others to highlight in order to read.

For my part:

[SMALL SPOILERS]

On a side note, reading comments on IMDB and amazon.com it is interesting to see people's reactions. There are so many saying the movie was great, but that the ending was lame. Or others saying that there is no real interpretation of the movie- it's just a bunch of impressions.

For my part, it seemed pretty straightforward- not ambiguous at all. While I like that (I like to know what's going on in a movie, or at least have enough clues to figure it out), this was quite surprising to me. Yet it seems there are many people who were confused and still didn't get what happened at the end (Ebert being one of them, apparently- he talks about two interpretations and seems to have missed the fact that Jacob's son died before the war). And the ending is not only not lame, it isn’t really even a twist. It's the natural conclusion to the story that was told.

I think there’s a lot the directory could have done to make this movie much more difficult to understand- that’s why it so surprising to me to read people accusing the movie of having no real plot and just being a jumble of incoherent images.

[/SMALL SPOILERS]

I did like the movie, and I think Loren makes a good point. I went in expecting to be shocked and bewildered, neither of which happened. If I’d gone in like I did with “Fight Club” (knowing absolutely nothing about the movie at all) I probably would have experienced what many others have.

* SPOILER ALERT!!!!!!!!*

Highlight to read hidden text....

The ending to the movie The Sixth Sense really seemed to borrow a little bit from Jacob's Ladder. I remember when I saw the Sixth Sense I knew the ending early on because it reminded me of Jacob's Ladder so therefore I never thought the Sixth Sense was that great....

!!!!!!

[spoilers]

Quote:
The ending to the movie The Sixth Sense really seemed to borrow a little bit from Jacob's Ladder.

I'd disagree- it's really an old theme used by lots of movies. Both were movies about what is real and what our perceptions are, but the list of movies that do that is not short (Total Recall, Fight Club, The Usual Suspects, The Matrix, The 13th Floor . . . etc.)

Really though, JL and TSS are two very different movies with different agendas. TSS is all about the shock value of the big reveal at the end. It spends a considerable amount of time setting up the audience to believe the Willis' character is alive so we'll all be blown away when we find out he's really dead.

In JL, on the other hand, we are given several, non-subtle clues throughout the whole movie that he never left the battle. What is presented as "reality" is quickly infiltrated with images of demons and othe wierdness, causing the audience to question what is really going on. The there is clear direction that this is a life and death struggle: "You're already dead," "I'm not dead!". While the audience might not get that, it is clear SOMETHING strange is going on, whether it's a bad trip or what. In the Sixth Sense the clues are there, but the director is doing his best to obscure them and hide them so you'll only see them the second time around and realize you missed them the first time (your "getting" it the first time notwithstanding). In JL, all of the clues were right up front in your face, even if you didn't know what to make of them.

But regardless of all of that, I feel JL is a much more relatable work than TSS- the first deals with the real life struggles of life and death, where the latter seemed mostly just about shocking the audience. I think I enjoyed TSS more, but JL is a more important work.

[/spoilers]

All the movies you reference there were made well after Jacob's Ladder. I'm not going to say that it was the first, but in my extensive four seconds of research, I can't think of any.

Well, basically the entire P.K. Dick oeuvre has that theme. I was speaking of movies, though.

It has been a long time since I have seen Jacob's Ladder, but I do recall thinking it was a good movie at the time.

However, concerning The Sixth Sense....




{SPOILERS}



I have never been so disappointed by a movie before in my life. Maybe I was just "lucky", but I knew the ending within 5 minutes of watching in the theater. The whole movie was just painful after that. With all the little clues they kept dropping I just wanted to jump up and scream "He sees DEAD PEOPLE! Get it!"



{DONE SPOILING}




That said... I did just see Memento again. While I did like it a lot in the theater, seeing it again just made me appreciate it that much more... It is not only a clever film, but really nicely delivered...

[spoilers]

Quote:
Maybe I was just "lucky", but I knew the ending within 5 minutes of watching in the theater. The whole movie was just painful after that.

Well I had kind of the same experience, but I think what I respected about the movie was that it wasn't all about the big reveal at the end. The theme of the movie really was about the struggle for life, fear, and letting go. Of course, I didn't necesarily agree with some of the underlying philosophies, but I can appreciate the visual depicition of the struggle. This at least sets it appart from movies like "The Sixth Sense", on which appreciation for the movie (for me at least) completely hinges on how well the audience was fooled.

Still, while I respected JL, I wasn't quite as impressed with it as I thought I'd be. The letdown of high expectations I guess.
[/spoilers]

Quote:
t is not only a clever film, but really nicely delivered...

Yes it is, and I feel that more every time I see it. People's main complaint about the movie is the "gimick", and I could understand that if the whole thing weren't so well done. In fact, the movie would have been engaging and impressive without going backwards- that was a device used to tell a story well, not justify the picture's existence.

Well, we're supposed to be viewing the story from the main character's point of view, and there's no way to make us forget what's just happened. Of course, it's not like he remembers what's about to happen, either, but that's a different problem, I suppose.

Sure, and that's why it works. Much like a typical story presents things in the future that change the story, this movie changes things in the past. However, when you step back and look at the whole story from the other side, the tale itself is still interesting even once you've put all of the pieces together. Or at least that's my feeling.

[spoilers]
Viewing it forward would have been a completely different take on the movie- rather than having Leonard’s perspective we'd get everyone else's, but we'd still get to see the manipulations and lies. I completely missed how Teddy was so obsessed with the car the first time around, and knowing that Natalie is using Leonard ahead of time might change the way we perceive the scenes with the two of them, but it is still fascinating story telling to see how she behaves in different ways around him depending on what she's trying to accomplish.
[/spoilers]

Incidentally, apparently there is an Easter egg on the two disc version of DVD that lets you view the movie in reverse order (or chronological order). My wife bought me the first DVD when it came out, so I've never really had a chance to try it out. Not sure that I'd want to sit around for two hours watching the movie that way, but it'd be interesting to see how it comes off without the "gimmick".

It's only on the special edition, not the regular edition. Chances are that rental places only carry the cheap one.

The UK rental edition has it (at least the one supplied by Amazon) and it wasn't really an Easter egg as such, just an entry in the extra.