Okay, spoiler warnings for a movie made in 1990, but whatevs.
We finally saw this film, intrigued by the claims that it inspired the beloved ‘‘Silent Hill’’ video games. It’s a psychological horror movie about a Vietnam Veteran with PTSD. Sort of. Turns out the whole film has been a hallucination induced while he dies in Vietnam. The movie ends when he finally comes to terms with his incomprehensibly unfair death, and he can let go of life.
I really liked it. I thought the subject matter important and the art style was really innovative. And yes, certain bits seemed right out of Silent Hill.
There’s something I don’t understand (or maybe a lot of things, but let’s start with this thing.)
I was under the impression based on the narrative that his kid died after he returned from Vietnam. At one point he’s reading a letter from his son that was obviously sent while he was a soldier.
If this was all a dying hallucination, did his son really die? When in the timeline did he die? Did his marriage never really fall apart, then?
Is there anything we can really figure out for sure happened? I mean, we don’t even know for sure that he was drugged by the government, do we? It seems like the ending throws all the facts into the air as utterly subjective and unknowable. But maybe I’m wrong.
Either way, I really liked the movie. Strongly recommended.
Agreed, well worth watching and ultimately up to your own interpretation. ISTR that he was in Vietnam to study the effects of the drug on his unit. (Was it in the water supply, can’t recall?) So as a scientist he wasn’t expected to die in combat but the effects of the drug, intended to make the unit super aggressive in combat, caused the American troops to turn on each other.
I remember the soldiers joking about how much time he spent in the latrine (“the doctor takes beaucoup shits”), but thinking he was doing some kind of observation there rather than just a little private fun time.
I haven’t seen the movie in years, but the thing that threw me was that in one of his hallucinations that allegedly occurred while he was dying in Vietnam, the November 1974 song Lady Marmalade (the Labelle version) was playing. I also remember seeing mid 70’s cars in his alleged hallucinations. If was dying in the 1960’s or before 1973, he would not know what these things were.
In chronological order:
Jacob’s son was killed sometime in the past.
Jacob is in Vietnam, something happens that makes soldiers in his unit go crazy. Jacob gets bayonetted and passes out which leads us to a psychedelic dream where:
He wakes up in a subway train. All that follows is his own thoughts, including him thinking that the US government was behind some conspiracy (which may or not be true within that story). He gradually realizes he’s in a dream world and that he’s dying. He slowly comes to accept it.
The movie is strongly influenced by Buddhist thinking like the Tibetan Book of the Dead.
I don’t know about his wife although his Jezebel girlfriend seems to be purely symbolic.
Throughout that dream, sights and sounds from reality affect his dream. E.g.: When his medevac helicopter crashes, he experiences that as a car explosion. When real doctors stand over him to operate (the two doctors we see at the end) he experiences that as the hellish operating room with the no-eyes doctor.
You may enjoy watching the DVD version with the commentary on, it makes some things explicit. The DVD I watched also had some extra clips where the writer goes on about it. The DVD has this nice extra scene, make sure to watch it with headphones in a dark room: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hkLhMuzk3E
(1) Jacob Singer goes to college, earns a doctorate degree; along the way he gets married and has a bunch of kids.
(2) Macaulay Culkin becomes a bumper magnet.
(3) Jacob quits his job (whatever it was before the war), leaves his wife and goes to Vietnam, where he get bayoneted in the gut.
(4) [Hallucination Time] After Vietnam, Jacob works for the post office, meets his sexy co-worker and begins living in sin with her. Starts having all sorts of crazy visions & flashbacks, nearly dies a couple times, and finally takes a taxicab to his old house in Brooklyn where his dead kid’s waiting.
(5) [Back in reality] Jacob dies.
As for the 70’s cultural references, there’s a couple explanations:
(1) Jacob could have volunteered very late in the war; the Vietnam conflict didn’t end until 1975.
(2) Jacob’s visions aren’t “hallucinations” per se, but a very real journey into a Limbo-like parallel reality which very closely mirrors our own future timeline. Which means that if he had miraculously survived his war injury, he’d continue with his life without remembering anything, except for a strong sense of deja-vu whenever he hears Lady Marmalade or sees an AMC Pacer.