Alternate Best Actor 1990: Tim Robbins in Jacob's Ladder

Tim Robbins did not receive an Oscar nomination for portraying Jacob "Professor" Singer in Jacob’s Ladder.

Jacob’s Ladder follows a former Vietnam vet as he is beset with disturbing visions while living in New York. 

Tim Robbins plays the titular Jacob where we enter the film seeming at the point in any Vietnam war film where things are about to go horribly wrong, which is when everyone has a good time. Robbins portrays largely a sense of camaraderie albeit briefly before all hell breaks loose and everyone seems brutally injured including Jacob himself, where Robbins provides immediate contrast from the warmth of the men joking with one another to viscerally seething pain of Jacob on the ground. We quickly cut to the future where Jacob is alone on a NYC subway and we begin to follow the path of the film. Robbins frequently is very much the average man in this situation and it is not a surprise that Frank Darabont wanted to cast Robbins for The Shawshank Redemption based on this film. Where Shawshank dealt with the immediate real horror of living in prison for a crime you did not commit, this film deals seemingly with something more existential, however in both Robbins’s work excels in offering an essential anchor of humanity. Robbins is the emotional guide for the film, something that is immediately tested when the tired man coming home from work is struck by seemingly a strange growth coming out of another subway passenger before seeing haunting images within the subway after he escapes the situation. Robbins importantly grounds these horrors which will be throughout the film through creating the progression of the situation as we see in his reactions, the first just considerable unease that jumps to more overt horror, but still as a man who thinks he just might be seeing something. 

Although not all seems to be going poorly for Jacob as he seems in a rather steamy relationship with a woman Jezzie (Elizabeth Peña), who seems to want to soothe Jacob. And for this moment it seems normal enough of a loving couple and I’d say it is important that Robbins brings this sense of normalcy in these moments as though Jacob is just living his life. There’s almost an immediate complication when shown a picture of his old family that died in the war. Robbins is truly great in the moment of looking at the picture and talking about them because almost instantly he brings such a strong sense of both the grief of their loss but also the comfort in their loss. His reaction isn’t just sadness, there's a palatable sense of love in every word of his delivery and his eyes. This makes the immediacy in which Jezzie decides to incinerate the picture more than a little questionable though she claims she essentially doesn’t like things that make him sad. We then follow Jacob as he tries to exist with a certain strangeness to everything, even seeing his chiropractor Louie (Danny Aiello) while friendly and warm seems almost a bit too ethereal. Although Jacob should wish for the ethereal back specialist when he begins to see one strange sight after another in the streets. In each instance Robbins’s performance captures the sheer intensity of the sights and the immediacy of their horror. 

The film then progresses in a state of insanity essentially as we suddenly shift between disparate elements. Occasionally we will have Jezzie concerned about Jacob, another she’s dancing with a literal demon, we will suddenly be in the memory of his old comforting home life with his deceased family, before being back to the horror. The sort of through line within this is Jacob’s character believing he and his other fellow survivors were part of some sort of government experiment that has left them broken. Robbins to his credit manages to weave all of this together to a core of a convincing performance where he embodies a distinct human element that could’ve been lost if we did not believe Jacob as a person going through all this above all else. Robbins brings a differentiation between moments of the more subtle horror where he finds this seething anxiety within his expression, that in a way seems the most terrifying. Robbins finds that sense in his reactions of just not feeling right like when he finds that his old mental health doctor apparently died in an explosion. Contrasting that though he is as believable in his bigger, but earned, reactions to the more overt horror by matching that more overt horror in his eyes as a man who has seen such strange terrible things. Yet he succeeds in being just the believable man suffering potentially from PTSD in the scenes with Jezzie at home where he brings a quieter vulnerability, or the moments with the old family where Robbins is quite moving in creating the real sense of warmth in those scenes. 

The film becomes a build then in overt horror and the intensity behind the trauma, the conspiracy and the horror. Where Robbins is effective in going from 10 to 11 as Jacob begins to fully lose it, sometimes with just a convincing frustration such as when he demands to know why his lawyer (George Costanza) has decided to drop the case to investigate the government, or eventually the truly petrifying fear when a hospital visit becomes seemingly a literal descent into hell. Robbins brings throughout that sequence, Rock Hudson in Seconds, a raw rush of rabid emotions that become all the more intense within the state of being held in place in his horror. Where Robbins elevates the imagery by matching the horror of it with his own expressions of a man going through this place. Robbins earns the growing tension up till a point of someone totally lost and in turn providing true relief when it seems like he saved by Louie who tells him he must spoilers accept his own death in order to escape the demons. I would say this whole aspect of the film is probably where Robbins is most essential as the imagery could carry much but there needs to be something genuine in the acceptance of death. Robbins delivers on this while also not seeming to light comparatively. In the scene where he climbs the titular ladder with his deceased son, Robbins has a deft touch in realizing the combination of sorrow and sincerity. Robbins shows the grief of all that is lost including himself as he speaks to his son, yet this is naturally softened where Robbins portrays the real connection and warmth within the relationship with his son. Robbins earns the moment of solace and turning a theoretical horror ending into something a bit more hopeful.