Can we talk about how misleading this part of the movie poster is? He is literally dreaming for 95% of the movie while he copes with his impending death. How can they get away with lying to people like that. It's one of the reasons I was so disappointed in the film since I saw that and was expecting more than "It's all in his head"
shareHe was dying. That's far more frightening than dreaming.
Seize the moment, 'cause tomorrow you might be dead.
If there really is an afterlife, I wonder if that would make people act better or worse. Sometimes, I think it would make people a lot more civilized, cause we would be alot happier that we would no longer fear death. But then I ask, would suicides greatly increase then? Cause how would all the people that are so unhappy with thier lives react?
shareI have suffered through sepsis and was near death a few times... and suffered consequences for some time afterwards, psychological as well as physical. It is painful and disturbing, much like this movie. But there is no afterlife. I felt that in my gut, in my mind. Just nothingness. It all disappears and that's it.
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I'm not 100% sure that there's an afterlife either. I've only been wishing that there is to lessen the fear of death. I have some serious health problems and I know I'm not gonna live a full lifespan. It could even only be a couple more years. I am not 100% sure if there is or is not an afterlife. But I have thought of something else too. If scientists in the future really ever do stumble onto real evidence of an afterlife, they'd really think twice to make such info public due to a fear of suicides becoming much more common. But that will never happen. Scientists are never gonna be able to 100% prove or disprove afterlife. No one will ever know the real truth until we're 100% irreversibly dead. And the chart my dad made, he could be wrong and was trying to make me feel better since my health is so bad. I can not comprehend nothingness forever, but I guess it's best if we remain with the thought "maybe there is, maybe there isn't" on the afterlife idea. That's the natural way it's been for a very long time and we are not meant to know and it should stay that way. That's how I will look at it from this moment onward.
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They also pretty much spelled out the twist ending two times in the movie before actually revealing it. But oh well.
shareI understand the confusion over the tagline, but honestly most people fail to understand Jacob's Ladder as it's meant to be interpreted and instead hold firm to a much simpler explanation. It is not one of those "it was all a dream" films as so many seem to believe. Its ambitions are far greater, its story far deeper and more complex than that.
Jacob is not dreaming, he's dying. For most of the film, his soul is essentially in limbo, which is why he's being exposed to such powerful forces of both good and evil. Louie's paraphrasing of Meister Eckhart explains everything. First he says that, if someone is afraid of dying, they'll see demons tearing their life apart. In Jacob's case, the demons come in frightening forms from the man with the shaking head to the winged creature dancing with Jezz to the doctors and patients in the asylum. Then Louie says that, if someone has made their peace, they'll see that the demons are really angels freeing them from the earth. Jacob's angels come in friendly, familiar forms including little Gabe and, most obviously, Louie himself.
The film is about a man struggling to let go of his life. He experiences a combination of memories, fantasies, and deep-seated fears while agents of heaven and hell descend upon his soul to exert their influence. The demons want Jacob to hold on to his life and succumb to his fears just as the angels want him to accept his death.
To be fair, I suppose it could be that there are no actual angels or demons, that it is all just in his head. Maybe the part of his mind that's denying his death is at war with the part that's accepting it. Maybe it doesn't matter, but I do believe the other interpretation is thie intended one. Whichever the case, the tagline is still accurate. Jacob's experience is no more a dream than those of the med students in Flatliners when they temporarily die. Both pictures presume the existence of an afterlife that a person can glimpse before they completely expire.
"Dream on..."
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