Special Features
As befits a Special Edition DVD, there are numerous extras, all of which enhance the experience of this movie. Included is an original trailer and television spot, several nicely informative text pages of production notes and a cast and crew list with biographies. There are a number of deleted scenes (some of which add to the LSD type psychedelia of the movie’s conspiracy sideline) with optional director’s commentary. The sound quality in the deleted scenes has a pronounced hiss, however, and the visual transfers are rather murkier than the movie as it appears on this DVD. There is an informative documentary featurette, in which the movie is described succinctly as “the dissolution of a man who is dying”. It covers the approach to demonic imagery, the visualization of a dying mind, and has screenwriter Rubin discuss his particular interest in dissolution. Director Lyne says that star Robbins sought the lightness in the character (as a humanizing means) and admits that he used in-camera effects throughout the film to enhance the realism of the hallucinatory scenes. He specifically refers to one scene taken out of the movie (but included on the DVD as a deleted scene) and talks of the importance of the idea of closure in human life. He discusses the intent to reveal Pena as a more demonic figure in the deleted scenes (and this is brought out further in the optional director’s commentary for that scene).
In addition is an insightful and engrossing commentary track by director Adrian Lyne in which he talks of how he became involved in the project (and of how it reminded him in particular of An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge), how he researched the Vietnam sequences to get the right look and of how his visualization differed in part from some details in the script. He talks of the visual influence of the paintings of Francis Bacon and says that he sought to achieve a kind of “Thalidomide imagery” for a look of fleshy deformation. There is much discussion of his visual style (in Jacob’s Ladder and in his work in general) with particular reference to the importance of close-ups for an added sense of tactility, often in quick glimpses to evoke time and place. He talks of his use of 16mm for the scenes of Robbins’ character and his son and on how the film was difficult to edit due to its conception of different times and shifting realities, intertwined with persistent memories. The long-rumored LSD-type drug experimentation in Vietnam alluded to in the film is also brought up as Lyne discusses the film’s thematic basis and plot manipulations. The commentary puts the film in appropriate perspective and is a most useful addition to the appreciation of Jacob’s Ladder as one of the truly few films to have sought to fuse the means of schizophrenic psychosis to film narrative and indeed to film form.
Wider Screenings Star Rating
The Movie: 5 stars
Picture: 5 stars
Sound: 5 stars
Extras: 5 stars
WS DVD rating: 5 stars
Additional Reading
anecdote from Film Tales: Movie Trivia in the Age of DVD
Wider Screenings DVD Attractions Trailer
(courtesy of YouTube embedded video)