MOVIES MADE ME #49: Top Ten Drug Movies

Something about that JACOB'S LADDER post compelled me to make this list (in no particular order)...

MOVIES MADE ME #48: JACOB'S LADDER

In an essay titled "Higher Ground: Moral Transgressions, Transcendent Fantasies," Stephen R. Bissette characterizes FLATLINERS, JACOB'S LADDER and GHOST (all Hollywood films, released by major studios in 1990) as "a triad that indicated a significant shift in the winds of the pop culture," harbingers of a new wave of fantasy horror that would stand in "marked contrast to the nihilism of the modern horror film."

Of course it's easier to talk in broad terms about "horror films of the 1980s" and "horror films of the 1990s," as if a stylistic change took place overnight (I'm completely guilty of this oversimplification, as I usually mark the dawn of 1990s psychological horror shortly after the release of SILENCE OF THE LAMBS), but there's no question that a subtler shift is illustrated by these three films.  One could suggest that the change started as early as A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET (1985), Wes Craven's monumental foray into "fantasy terror," and lasted until the postmodern slasher SCREAM (1996).  A number of films made in between these genre landmarks seem to revolve around the yuppie culture's fear of karmic comeuppance.  One could expand the scope further to suggest that the "new wave" coincided with a return of the transformative values in American pop culture during the late 1960s -- values that were largely repressed during the "greed is good" decade and the Reagan era.  Or, in a truly reductive manner, one could say that these films were reaching back even further, to the essential warnings of the old Bela Lugosi/Boris Karloff "mad doctor" morality tales of the 1930s and early 1940s (FRANKENSTEIN, THE DEVIL COMMANDS, etc).

Bissette dances around these ideas rather than delving deeply into an examination of the triad that prompted his astute observation, and I can't really blame him.  It's difficult for a critic to get too serious about Hollywood's misguided efforts to visualize a metaphysical philosophy that will please all mainstream moviegoers, regardless of their religious bent.

To put things in perspective: All three of the films in question are about characters coming to terms with death.  In FLATLINERS, a group of ambitious med school students carry out a series of experiments whereby each of them (except for Oliver Platt, who's a big sissy) gets to have a near-death experience, or NDE.  Their experiences are all deeply personal, related to past "sins" that they re-live in hyperreal flashbacks.  By repenting these sins, they are able to beat death -- or, at least, their fear of death.  GHOST is a more conventional ghost story, in which an earthbound spirit seeks justice (and a bit of righteous revenge) from beyond the grave.  Angels and demons, Heaven and Hell are vaguely depicted here in simple terms of light and dark.  Once justice has been served, the earthbound spirit can "go the light."  There's no real theology at work.  What matters is that, in both of these films, death is an occasion for karmic reckoning.  JACOB'S LADDER is more complicated, because it at aims at presenting a more specific (and more esoteric, at least for American moviegoers) philosophy.

As it happens, both GHOST and JACOB'S LADDER originated in the mind of the same man.  Bruce Joel Rubin got his start in Hollywood by writing the script for BRAINSTORM (1983).  Rubin says that his original story was "about exploration into the human mind rather than exploration mechanically into outer space," so it would seem to be a natural fit for filmmaker Douglas Trumbull, the  special effects visionary responsible for Dave's journey through inner-space at the end of 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY.  In the end, however, Rubin was disappointed with Trumbull's BRAINSTORM, feeling that it emphasized spectacle over story.   In the following years, he moved his hopes to JACOB'S LADDER, a script that gradually became something of a Hollywood legend.  Everybody read it.  Everybody loved it.  Nobody wanted to make it. 

Rubin says that the story originated with dream.  He describes it as follows: "A subway late at night; I am traveling through the bowels of New York City.  There are very few people on the train.  A terrible loneliness grips me.  The train pulls inot the station and I get off.  The platform is deserted.  I walk to the nearest exit, and discover the gate is locked.  A feeling of terrible despair begins to pulse through me as I hike to the other end of the platform.  To my horror, that exit is chained, too.  I am totally trapped and overwhelmed by a sense of doom.  I know with perfect certainty that I will never see daylight again.  My only hope is to jump onto the tracks and enter the tunnel, the darkness.  The only direction from there is down.  I know the next stop on my journey is hell.”

Over the course of three days he wrote the bulk of the story in which Jacob wrestles with demons in the everyday world around him... then stumbled when it came time to end the story.  He simply didn't know how to end it, because he didn't fully understand Jacob's struggle.  Rubin didn't think of himself as a modern horror writer, so nihilism (leaving Jacob stranded in hell) didn't seem like the right ending.  Nor did he want to craft a narrative in which Jacob simply fights off the demons, and lives happily ever after.  Just as BRAINSTORM was meant to be an "exploration into the human mind rather than exploration mechanically into outer space," so JACOB'S LADDER had to be an exploration of the human spirit rather than an effects-driven descent into hell.   In short, Rubin wanted to create a modern myth.

One day he realized that what he was really writing was a variation on AN OCCURENCE AT OWL CREEK BRIDGE (Robert Enrico's 1962 short film, which originally aired as an episode of Rod Serling's TWILIGHT ZONE).  He figured he could essentially update that Revolutionary War-era story for the Vietnam generation, and thereby establish a Maguffin (the "ladder" experiment) that would distract the audience from the third-act revelation that Jacob is already dead.  In the same moment, the writer realized that everything he had already written was taking place in Jacob's dying mind.  This is where things get complicated.  Unlike FLATLINERS or GHOST, JACOB'S LADDER is not based on a simple, conventional Western worldview.   Most of the action in the film takes place when the main character, Jacob Singer, is in what Tibetan Buddhists refer to as "the painful bardo of dying."

Sogyal Rinpoche, author of The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, says that this phase of existence lasts from the beginning of the process of physical death until the end of what is known as "inner respiration," then culminates in the dawning of the "Grand Luminosity."  The entire process can be as long as twenty minutes or as short as a few seconds, depending on how the dying mind reacts.  Rinpoche explains: "At the moment of death, there are two things that count: Whatever we have done in our lives, and what state of mind we are in at that moment."  So, in addition to the basic principle of karma, the bardo experience depends on the individual's perception and awareness of the process of death.  The lone angel of JACOB'S LADDER, played by Danny Aiello, explains this by paraphrasing the German mystic Meister Eckhart: "If you're frightened of dying, you'll see devils tearing your life away.  But if you've made your peace, then the devils are really angels, freeing you from the earth."  Jacob's inward journey is (like Nancy's journey in A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET) about overcoming fear and embracing death.  That's the only way he can truly beat the demons. 

Now that he had his story, Rubin had to find someone who could interpret it visually.  Early contenders included Ridley Scott, but the job eventually went to Adrian Lyne (FATAL ATTRACTION, LOLITA).  Lyne, like Rubin, interpreted the prospective myth through the filter of his own personal beliefs.  Whereas Rubin had conceived the demons or devils of Jacob's hell in traditional Judeo-Christian terms, drawing inspiration from famous images by Hieronymous Bosch and William Blake, Lyne wanted something more abstract.

Hieronymous Bosch - from "The Garden of Earthly Delights"

William Blake - "The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed with Sun"

Rubin explains: "[Lyne] felt that people are too familiar with the classical renderings of the demonic soul.  We see demons in their classical costumes and poses, and we classify them instantly.  They are familiar to use and, therefore, not threatening.  They are easy to dismiss, and therefore, not demonic."  The director focused instead on the paintings of Francis Bacon and the photography of Joel Peter Witkin.

Francis Bacon - "Self Portrait"

Joel Peter Witkin - "Mother and Child"

 Stephen R. Bissette makes much of this transfer of sensibilities: "Had Lyne embraced the clearly Christian iconography of Rubin's script, JACOB'S LADDER would have stood regressively apart from its contemporaries [...] JACOB'S LADDER worked best when daring the tightwire walk over the abyss between the polar extremities of [Luis] Buñuel and [David] Lynch: its horror lay in the dread of the plunge, its beauty in the yearning for and attaining of redemption."  I absolutely agree that Lyne's demons are one of the main secrets of the film's success.  They make Jacob's struggle genuinely mysterious and frightening instead of simply allegorical.  The switch also makes good story sense, because Jacob Singer is not a Christian.  In an unshot scene from the script, Jacob's philosophy professor says that Jacob's "visions" are particularly disturbing because Jacob has "no context for it."  He's "a renegade Existentialist suffering demons a hundred years after Freud."  Lyne logically opts for a kind of "demons" that post-Freudians can understand.

Joel Peter Witkin - "Man with No Legs"

Legless demon in JACOB'S LADDER

"Mad doctor" demon in JACOB'S LADDER

Drive-by demon in JACOB'S LADDER

JACOB'S LADDER depicts its demons as organic "freaks," the type whose grotesque beauty we can't help studying with morbid fascination.  Bissette's comparison to Luis Buñuel and David Lynch is instructive (Salvador Dali and David Cronenberg might have been even more apt), because it serves as a reminder that the effectiveness of surreal imagery is often related to the close proximity between beauty and horror.

Salvador Dali - "Women forming a Skull"

Porn star Marilyn Chambers (before Cronenberg)

Marilyn Chambers (after Cronenberg)

Only one of Lyne's demons is beautiful in the most conventional sense.  The sensuality of Elizabeth Peña's character reinforces the idea that Jacob's "hell" is as alluring and addictive as it is horrifying.  If Jacob weren't so lustful over Elizabeth Peña, he might not have such a hard time rejecting his false reality.... but of course carnal desire promises its own version of transcendence.  I think that one of the truly sublime achievements of the film is the party scene in which Peña's character, Jezzie, orgasmically submits her entire body to the penetrating thrusts of some kind of giant thalidomide monster.  This is a pornographic frenzy worthy of Cronenberg's "new flesh"... though it also reminds me of Raoul Duke's line in FEAR AND LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS: "I was right in the middle of a fucking reptile zoo, and somebody was giving booze to these goddamn things!"

Joel Peter Witkin - "Ars Moriendi"

Jezzie in light

Jezzie in dark

Peña's Jezzie character is the pivotal character in Rubin's shooting script for JACOB'S LADDER.  The story reaches its climax when Jacob realizes that she is merely a projection of his earthly desires, and that he is no longer "of the earth."  By realizing that, Jacob comes to understand that the life he's holding onto isn't real.  He lets go of his fears and desires and moves forward, into the bardo of becoming.  

This revelation is preempted by a scene in which Jacob takes a drug (the anti-"ladder," delivered to him by the Michael Newman character) that allows him to see things clearly for the first time.  The scene reminds me a bit of the red pill / blue pill scene in THE MATRIX, in that its entire purpose is to illustrate Jacob's willingness to surrender.   I imagine this was a significant scene for Rubin, because it parallels his own transformative experience on LSD (which you can read about here)... but, after seeing the excised scene on the special edition DVD, I'm not convinced that it's necessary.   

Once Jacob trips through the doors of perception and sees the world as it truly is (to quote Blake: infinite), Rubin's original script had him rising up what the writer describes as a "Spielbergian" stairway to heaven, inspired by Gustave Doré's engravings of Dante's Paradiso...

Gustave Doré's "Paradiso"

Apparently put off by these deeply intellectual and visually grandiose qualities, Lyne chose to eliminate all three of Rubin's climactic scenes, focusing instead on a resolution drawn from his own personal experience.  The character of Gabe (Jacob's dead son, played by Macauley Culkin) is entirely Lyne's addition to the story -- his counterpoint to all the faceless demons in Jacob's hell.  Rubin notes that the director always wanted to give the resolution, Jacob's ascent into heaven, a "human face."  That's why he ultimately chose to end the film on the image of Gabe leading Jacob up the staircase in his own house.  This obviously goes against the Buddhist philosophy of freeing oneself from all earthly attachements... but when he saw the finished product, Rubin agreed with the decision.  "The image of heaven as hearth and home had been Adrian's aim all along, and now that he delivered that ending, it fit.  It was in truth the only possible satisfying culmination to the film that he had made."  

Adrian Lyne's stairway to heaven

On the other hand, one senses a bit more disappointment in the writer's claim that JACOB'S LADDER "was no longer the movie I had originally conceived, but in a sense it was the film it needed to become."  What it became is a film that, shorn of the specifics of Judeo-Christian imagery and Tibetan Buddhist philosophy, resonated with a large (American) audience.  By stimulating feelings of hope and fear through captivating depicitions of beauty and horror -- even though it doesn't present a particularly coherent worldview -- it is a more visceral and affecting film than it might have been had Rubin made the film himself.   Still, like the writer, I have to wonder what those initial ideas might have evolved into under different circumstances.  For example, just try to visualize this definitively non-Hollywood ending (described in Rubin's notes on the published shooting script)...

"By finally 'letting go,' Jacob frees himself from the entire struggle and accepts the inevitability of his death, of death itself.  At that moment his body is engulfed in flames and, like a Buddhist monk, he sits down and allows himself to be consumed by them.  The screen goes dark.  Gradually there is a sense of dawn.  A charred mass becomes visible before us: the remains of Jacob Singer.  It is a grotesque sight that grows stranger as we notice that in the area of his eyes there is movement, life.  At that moment, Michael Newman appears as if from heaven and approaches Jacob, instructing him to get up.  Jacob's flesh, Michael says, can't hold him any more.  He reaches for Jacob's blackened body and pulls at the dead skin.  A beam of light shoots out.  Michael tells Jacob that he is free, he has won the battle.  Full of light.  Jacob emerges from his lifeless flesh a new being.  By accepting death, Jacob is born into a new triumphant life.  His soul is free."

That too is a movie I'd like to see.

MOVIES MADE ME #47: DELIVERANCE and the Savage Cinema

A few weeks ago my friend John Muir started a blog thread called “Savage Fridays,” his tribute to a series of New Hollywood films that he has dubbed the “savage cinema.”  He defines this series of films by the questions they pose: “In the crucible of (unwanted) combat, the Every Person thoroughly tests him or herself.  Does he or she have what it takes to survive?  Does this character descend, finally, into bloody violence?  And what is the personal, mental, and physical toll of shedding civilization and established norms of morality, even for an instant?   Can you come back from that?  Do you want to come back from that?”  Muir gives as his prime examples several well-known films: Sam Peckinpah’s STRAW DOGS, John Boorman’s DELIVERANCE, Wes Craven’s LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT and THE HILLS HAVE EYES, and Meir Zarchi’s notorious rape-revenge flick I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE.  (One could make a case for horror films as different as THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE and THE DESCENT, so I'm very curious to see how far Muir takes this thread...)

I am a huge fan of Wes Craven, but I have to say that I’m not as big a fan of LAST HOUSE or THE HILLS HAVE EYES... and John’s post got me thinking about why I'm not a fan of “savage cinema” in general, in spite of my agreement with his theory that these films display a noble philosophical integrity.  John eloquently made his point in my documentary NIGHTMARES IN RED WHITE AND BLUE by making a distinction between LAST HOUSE / STRAW DOGS and the Charles Bronson vehicle DEATH WISH.  The savage cinema, he says, aims to show us “the naked ugliness of violence” -- the films consciously criticize our tacit acceptance of violence as casual entertainment -- while a film like DEATH WISH celebrates violence. 

I’ve spent a lot of time considering this argument over the last few years, while developing a book on westerns.  In my mind, DEATH WISH is a traditional western, in the sense that it makes a simple argument for the necessity of violence in response to violence.  Traditional western often posit that, without violence, there can be no order in society.  (I’m NOT saying that all westerns make this argument, but I’d say that it’s more common than not for the genre... up until the late 1960s.)  LAST HOUSE, on the other hand, is a filmmaker’s argument against violence.  Wes Craven has said that he intended the final scene in the film to illustrate that violence has not resolved anything.  The violence in the film is intended to make the audience uncomfortable (unlike the violence in DEATH WISH or DIRTY HARRY, which we’re supposed to cheer on) and to leave us feeling that we should not and cannot accept a world that casually accepts violence as a necessity of life.

You don’t have to take my word for it, or John’s.  Here’s a quote from Craven (quoted in Brian J. Robb's biography): “I see The Last House on the Left in a way as a protest film.  It was made during the time of protest, the early seventies.  It had, among other things, as well as attempting to be a popular film and a controversial film, been an attempt to show violence the way I and the producer thought it really was, rather than the way it was typically depicted in films.  In that sense, it had a real purpose to it and I think it has a legitimate artistic power.”

In a 1972 Playboy interview, director Sam Peckinpah elaborates on the point: “You can’t make violence real to audiences today without rubbing their noses in it.  We watch our wars and see men die, really die, every day on television, but it doesn’t seem real.  We don’t believe those are real people dying on that screen.  We’ve been anesthetized by the media.  What I do is show people what it’s really like – not by showing it as it is so much as by heightening it, stylizing it.  Most people don’t even know what a bullet hole in a human body looks like.  The only way I can do that is by not letting them gloss over the looks of it, as if it were the seven o’clock news from the DMZ.  When people complain about the way I handle violence, what they’re really saying is ‘Please don’t show me; I don’t want to know, and get me another beer out of the icebox.’”

It’s debatable whether or not Peckinpah’s visual style serves his intentions (some critics argue that he makes violence appear more poetic, rather than more horrific), but it seems to me that his storytelling techniques -- like Craven’s -- support the argument.  And that is precisely why the savage cinema is not one of my favorite subgenres... Films like LAST HOUSE and STRAW DOGS are so effective in this aim that I don’t want to sit through them more than once.  I say that not because I want to avoid movies that make me uncomfortable. I’m a horror fan, so I love movies that make me feel uncomfortable.  And I'm not saying that I don’t often agree with the savage cinema’s generally pessimistic view of the world we live in, or that I don't want to be reminded of it.  I'm only saying that I prefer films that offer some glimmer of hope that people can rise above our baser natures.  I’m not asking for much... just a glimmer of hope.  (Blanket optimism is actually more tiresome to me than blanket pessimism, so I really don't need much.)  And that’s why I love DELIVERANCE.

I'm actually hesitant to admit that DELIVERANCE is one of my favorite films, because what most people remember about the film is (a) an inbred guy playing a banjo, and (b) Ned Beatty getting raped.  You might not expect much poetry from a film like that, but DELIVERANCE surprises.  Some credit is due to director John Boorman, cinematographer Vilmos Szigmond and whoever actually played that banjo music.  Some of the credit must also go to Jon Voight, Ned Beatty and Ronny Cox, all of whom bring their characters to life with remarkable intensity.  But personally I'm inclined to give most of the credit to author James Dickey, who allegedly exerted a tremendous (and often contentious) influence over the production, and actor Burt Reynolds, who brings the film's most compelling character to life. 

In his recent review of DELIVERANCE, John Muir warns us not to “make the mistake that the Burt Reynolds character speaks for the movie, which I've seen some critics do.”  This is a valid point, since the character that dominates the second half of the narrative is Ed (played by Jon Voight).  It is also a very significant personal note for Muir, who finds his own way into the story by empathizing with the character of Drew (played by Ronny Cox).  Muir confesses: “Of all the characters in the film, Drew is probably the one I most sympathize with; the one I imagine I’m probably most like in a crisis.  I’d like to say I’m like Ed…but who knows?  I tend to seek answers in consensus and spend most of my time debating art.   So nobody take me on a trip to a river, okay?”  This reinforces Muir’s earlier point that he appreciates savage cinema because “I have always lived a sheltered and safe life.  I’m a largely risk averse person in terms of my choices and life-style.  I live in a world where there is ample police protection, no military draft, and remarkably little crime. But I admire the Savage Cinema films I’ve mentioned above because they force audiences to ponder, quite frankly: what would I do?” 

I can relate to this honest self-evaluation.  But still I find my thoughts gravitating mostly toward the Burt Reynolds character.  Not because of his hyper-masculine swagger, but because he is the narrative’s only voice of transcendence.... and that is what I find missing in so many examples of the savage cinema.  There’s a reason that it’s usually missing: Horror doesn’t want to give you an “out.”  It wants to put a gun in your hand and tells you that you have to kill your spouse or your child.  Then it tells you that if you don’t choose, they’ll both die.  A truly savage horror movie convinces you that you won’t get to walk away from this experience unscathed.  No matter what, you will be transformed. 

Lewis, the Burt Reynolds character in DELIVERANCE, not-so-secretly yearns for transformative experience.  He wants to be tested, to see what he’s really made of.  He's confident of a positive outcome, but he turns out to be a lot less tough than he thought he was.  Many of us don't have any real desire to be tested on that level... maybe because we fear we’d turn out to be more “savage” than Lewis.  As John says, who knows?  To me, the important thing about the Lewis character is not his toughness or his level of savagery, but his desire.  He is not superficially curious about what he’s capable of.  He doesn’t want to be a contestant on FEAR FACTOR or SURVIVOR.  His boat trip down the Cahulawassee River is not a matter of entertainment.  This is life and death stuff.  He wants to look into the void.

When one of the backwoods locals asks him, “What the hell you wanna go fuck around with that river for?” Lewis responds, “Because it’s there.”  This is the same thing that climbers say about Mt. Everest.  In fact, if you want to understand the character of Lewis, go read Jon Krakauer’s book Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mt. Everest Disaster.  (Well, first go read James Dickey’s Deliverance... then read Into Thin Air.)    Krakauer, like Dickey, understands the transcendent quality of extreme experiences... something that wasn’t as over-commercialized when DELIVERANCE was made.  Today, as I suggested, Lewis could have his own reality show (he'd be a great host for DOOMSDAY PREPPERS)... but the risks of his experiences would be comparatively small, and his transformation would therefore be comparatively superficial.  

I like to imagine that Lewis would run screaming from reality TV.  Run all the way to the Alaskan wilderness to re-live Jack London’s “To Build a Fire,” confronting the void with no one around to take notice.  Why?  Not to find out what he's made of.. but to surrender everything he has.  My love of DELIVERANCE is rooted in one line from the movie.  It’s as simple as this: “Sometimes you have to lose yourself before you can find anything.”  The savage cinema is generally about losing everything, including oneself.  But unlike many of those other films, DELIVERANCE features a character who is willing -- nay, eager -- to risk everything.  He chooses to confront the void.  It’s not the outcome (Ed's perpetual nightmare) that keeps me coming back to this film.  It’s Lewis's deeply human desire to go further, to delve into the nightmare... a desire that cannot be erased or ignored until he's already gone too far.