The thoughtfulness of this script haunts me over time and revisiting it every decade reminds me that the mood and bleakness of this movie makes sense in the context of this story and theme. Sometimes a film will rely on an aesthetic of bleakness that actually has no purpose except as some fantasy in the cinematographer's mind that the bleakness "adds" to the film. Usually, it does not. But Jakob's Ladder walks so close to the abyss of existentialism and afterlife that one must see the darkness before the dawn.
If we take the story for what it presents then A soldier has been gravely wounded in Vietnam and is having flashforward visions of a life that he can never have. This is like the most haunted version of A Christmas Carol ever. Because the events in his vision take place after the war, they actually never take place at all. He doesn't survive the war.
Because there is a suggestion that the soldiers were drugged by the military and turned on each other, we are also forced to suspect the narrator himself. He is drugged, after all. Also, the suggestion that the platoon was drugged was made in the future vision, that doesn't exist, so how can we trust that information revealed in a future vision is accurate for the past? We do not actually know if the platoon was drugged, only that Jakob was having a vision of the future in which someone reveals that the platoon was drugged as an explanation for why he was stabbed by a fellow soldier.
If the vision, and movie, is Jakob's extrasensory journey to death, all taking place in his dying brain on an operating table in Vietnam, then this detail about the platoon being drugged may be his own rationalization process about giving some motive and meaning to his own death.
And the characters we are introduced to, Louis, Jezebel, Sarah, Eli...don't exist. Perhaps never existed. While It's A Wonderful Life gives George Bailey a chance to see what his hometown is like if he had never been born, Jakob is given a chance to see parts of a life he would never have. He's invented all these characters to complete the life stolen from him by war and he's invented the conspiracy to give himself closure. Eli, Sarah, Jeze, his job as a messenger (Mail Man) are all invented during his coma. This was the life he lost, with all the complications and disappointments . The struggle is building something so imperfect and still letting go without making amends.
I must deduct points for the use of the melodramatic photo montage that seemed low hanging fruit. It's noteworthy that at least 20 minutes of this was cut to dumb it down so an audience would grasp some thread of meaning. Maybe the extra scenes would have been confusing and diluted the impact of the film which really covers a lot of ground at breakneck pace.
Jakob's Ladder has a rightful spot next to The Seventh Seal and A Christmas Carol and The Family Man for existential twists. It's dark in places but the light is there if you look for it.
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