THE JACKET
US/UK, 2004, 103 minutes, Colour.
Adrienne Brody, Keira Knightly, Kris Kristofferson, Jennifer Jason Lee, Kelly Lynch, Brad Renfro, Daniel Craig, Steven Mackintosh.
Directed by John Maybury.
Director John Maybury declared that he was very pleased that it was difficult to slot The Jacket in any genre label. He is quite right. It is one of those multi-layered films that almost defies clear description.
The Jacket’s prologue opens during the Gulf War with a graphic visual and sound collage of bombing and combats and concludes with the point blank death of the hero of the film. He tells us that this was the first time that he died. With the war over, action goes ahead a year where the recovered Jack Starks (Adrien Brody, Oscar-winner for The Pianist) is hitching on the road. He encounters a young girl, her drug-raddled mother and a broken down car. He is then picked up by a friendly driver but stopped by the highway patrol. The next thing he is being accused of murder and confined to an institution for the criminally insane. This adds road film and murder mystery to the war genre.
The institution is one of those terrible places, a modern Bedlam, some Shock Corridor stuff, with Kris Kristofferson as a doctor experimenting with drugs and confinement in a morgue body shelf-container as a means for recovering memory. What happens inside the box, especially when strapped into the jacket, takes us from science and medical drama to time travel and 2007. And, if that sounds intriguing, then the film is recommended.
One of the difficulties for time travel and changing the future or the past is the lack of logic inherent in these scenarios. Different time and timeless dimensions may be all right. But, the future changing the past? (Think films like Frequency.) What makes it somewhat more plausible is speculating on whether the events are actually happening to Jack or are the kind of events he would like to happen.
While the harassed Jack might be vent on vengeance, the film changes genre yet again and moves towards more benign themes, Jack as a kind of guardian angel, protecting the mother and daughter, especially the daughter (Keira Knightly) whom he meets in 2007.
John Maybury has worked as an artist and production designer. He gets ample opportunity to create moving images of contemporary graphic art, especially for the introduction of Jack’s memory recovery. (Maybury also directed the portrait-study of painter, Francis Bacon, in 1998 with Derek Jacobi.)
The cast is persuasive, Brody not being a conventional looking hero which makes his performance stronger and more ambiguous. Kris Kristofferson, more grizzled than ever, is quite sinister. Jennifer Jason Leigh is his opponent in the institution and Jack’s helper. Daniel Craig has a lively cameo as one of the inmates.
So, difficult to describe, but easy to recommend to audiences who like intelligent and visually arresting drama.
1. The impact of this drama? Its originality? Its combining various genres and traditions?
2. The work of John Maybury – as an artist, set designer? Film director? An English director working on an American theme?
3. The cast, the combination of American and British actors?
4. The opening with Iraq, 1991 (and echoes of the Iraq war later)? The collage of film footage, CNN, night vision and green scenes, bombings, soldiers’ brutality, Iraqi prisoners? The American soldiers? Jack, as a fighter, his trust, meeting the boy, his being shot at point-blank range? The war and its impact?
5. The death, his comment about the first time he died? The medics and their reaction, his survival? The year passing? No family, his wandering the roads, no prospects? No background? Amnesia? Was he really dead or not?
6. The encounter with Jackie and her mother, her mother’s violent reaction, the drugs, the broken-down car, the friendship with Jackie, his starting the car? The mother’s anger and driving off? His being picked up on the road as a hitchhiker, the young man, the police following – waking with no memory? The gradual memories coming back and the young man shooting the policeman?
7. In court, the witnesses and testimony, his being found insane, going to Alpine Grove?
8. Life in Alpine Grove, the range of inmates, the therapy sessions (especially when Jack was wanting to provoke the group and they responded in chaos and he was sent back to the Jacket)? Dr Becker, Kris Kristofferson and his appearance, manner? The drugs, the tough treatment, Jack being manhandled, brought downstairs, put in the coffin-like situation, the morgue drawer? The effect on Jack? The sudden glimpses, the visual presentation of his regaining memory? The aftermath of the experience, his physical attack on Dr Becker and injuring his face? His watching TV? The discussions with Dr Lorenson, the discussions with Mackenzie?
9. The different photographic style for 2007, bright colour, naturalistic? The Christmas Eve setting? The meeting with Jackie, finding himself on the snow, nowhere to go? Her giving him a lift, taking him home, preparing something to eat, her fridge? Her talk, having a bath, her fears? Seeing his own dog-tags and remembering he gave them to the little Jackie as a gift? Her fears? Jack and his learning about his death? His return to the drawer? His return visits to 2007, the change in Jackie, a growing bond, her belief in him, finding out about Dr Becker, Dr Lorenson? Giving him the information? Their going to Alpine Grove and interviewing Dr Lorenson, the change in her after fifteen years? Finding out where Dr Becker was, his coming out of church, Jack’s confrontation, hearing the names of the other men that he had treated – and their deaths? His haunting Dr Becker? The puzzle about his own death, the date, the headstone in the cemetery, his wanting to find out how he died?
10. His visit to Jean, seeing the young Jackie again, the letter he had written to her, her reading it, her watching him out the window – Jackie’s story about her mother burning to death because of the cigarette? Her extinguishing the cigarette? The possibility of a change of life?
11. The relationship between Jack and Jackie, sexual, his needs? His return visits? His slipping in the ice, his death? The recurrence of his being shot in the war – the two deaths coinciding? The visits to the cemetery?
12. The visit to Jackie, her not recognising him, her being a nurse, rather than a waitress? On the phone with her mother?
13. The story of Dr Lorenson and her friend, the little boy, the therapy, Jack giving her the information about what she did, the experimentation, its success?
14. The movement from a war story, to a road story, to a murder mystery, to a medical and therapy story, to time travel, to the guardian angel travelling in time to change people’s lives for the better? Jack as a ghost, an angel?
15. The credibility and plausibility of the plot? The life that Jack might have lived? A kind of purgatory story? A haunting, a guardian story?
