The Jacket

The Jacket is a dark psychological drama that includes time travel, psychiatric patient abuse, and a fair share of violence and gore. The film starts with the tagline ‘I was 27 years old the first time I died.’ And it only gets bleaker from there including murder, insane asylums, and alcoholism. Since this film has been released into the wasteland that is March in the theaters this is probably one of the best films to be releasing in the next few weeks. This film made by auteur director John Maybury best known not for the films he has done in the last 20 years but for the pop video for Sinead O’Connor’s ‘Nothing Compares to U’. Maybury brings honesty to his first Hollywood film that keeps it from being about time travel, or whodunit, or a redemption story. Some of the film feels borrowed, much of the time travel and redemption echoes issues from Donnie Darko, but the film is enthralling and appealing and unique in that at its core it is a love story.

The Jacket stars Adrien Brody, of The Pianist fame, as an undernourished (he always seems to play someone undernourished) Gulf War veteran who is convicted of a murder he may or may not have committed and sentenced to a mental hospital as criminally insane. Now it is hard to explain what this film is about, this is not a tale of a wrongfully accused man clearing his name. Neither is it truly a redemption story since Jack Starks doesn’t really have anything, at least anything he can remember, for which to redeem himself. Jack seems like a fairly nice guy who just happened to have part of his head blown out during the Gulf War. The first thing we see is him helping a woman and her child with a broken down car in 1992, he is kind and doesn’t demand anything of these people, he just helps them and turns away when he is abused and assaulted. Then through a series of issues none of which Jack can remember he is committed to a mental institution as criminally insane for the murder of a state trooper. You’d think that a lack of physical evidence would have cast doubt on this conviction but then I supposed the legal system doesn’t try very hard for a homeless vet with no family. Thus Jack ends up in a Vermont metal hospital where he meets two psychiatrists, Doctor Becker played by the always gruff Kris Kristofferson and Doctor Lorenson played by Jennifer Jason Leigh. These two doctors are supposed to be either ends of the spectrum. Doctor Lorenson speaks to her patients offering kindness and compassion yet she makes little headway with the cases in front of her. Doctor Becker, on the other hand, subjects his patients to questionable medical practices and views his patients as criminals not people. He seems to make greater headway but then many of his patients end up dead.

Now comes the questionable plot device of the title, The Jacket. Doctor Becker’s therapy involves giving some of his patients doses of hallucinogenic drugs, tying them up into a straight jacket and sticking them into a morgue closet. One assumes from extraneous dialogue in the film that Doctor Becker only does this to criminally insane patients without family, maybe to avoid lawsuits, but it is never fully explained how regularly this method is used simply that its success rate is less than stellar. Never the less, the questionably good doctor proceeds with it full throttle on Starks who visibly gets weaker and more unnerved, confused, and violent with each treatment. The claustrophobia, the dark, and the terror are all vividly portrayed by the flexible and talented Brody. Of course this treatment has an unexpected side effect propelling Jack into the future well after his death.

Suddenly Jack is outside a diner where an attractive but rather unpleasant woman picks him up and takes him home on Christmas Eve. This boozing, chain smoking, trashy woman played with spectacular vulgarity by Kiera Knightley turns out to be Jackie Price the little girl Jack helped with the broken down car before the murder. Obviously this causes Jack a bit of consternation when he learns that it is now 2007. Jackie’s life has not gone well, her alcoholic mother burned to death, she has no family, and seems to be following her mother’s path of drinking herself into an early grave. Now of course during his trial Jack could not present the names of the mother and child to corroborate his location, but here, when he meets the girl in the future it does not occur to him to gather information to clear his name. Instead he finds out that he died only four days after the day that he went into the box in 1992. Reminiscent of DOA is it not. Thus Jack has four days to find out what is happening to him in 1992 to prevent his death.

Of course being in the box does help to raise some of Jack’s repressed memories, but instead of dwelling on his remembrances of the murder and his guilt or innocence, the film chooses to focus on his relationship of the past and the future and his own death. Perhaps a more pressing matter since his death is only four days away and a review of his case could take months or years. So Jack’s guilt or innocence of the crimes of which he is convicted is merely context for his incarceration and not a driving force of the plot. His death, certainly a more important item is what motivates him and Jackie to begin a search for clues in 2007 to prevent his death in 1992.

Starks emerges from the box in 1992 frantic to know what happened to him and how this form of time travel is possible. Another inmate of the institution, who may or may not be reliable, verifies that this time travel is possible inside of the jacket. From then on Jack spends his time trying to get put back in the box over the objections of Doctor Lorenson. Once back in 2007 he not only convinces Jackie to help him in his search for how he was killed in 1992 but also begins a relationship with her. Now Brody and Knightly make a strange couple but they seem to make things work in this dark existence which both share. It is as if they feed off of the darkness in each other’s lives and are able to salvage something good from it. Of course there is some unnecessary gratuitous nudity involved but then again what R rated movie doesn’t. The pair visits both of the doctors but neither seems willing to tell about the events surrounding Jack’s death beyond that he died of a blunt trauma to the head.

The climactic crux of the film is ‘what does someone do for other people when he has nothing to live for?’ And in this case Jack does not have much of a life left anyway. The question moves from can Jackie help to save Jack’s past, or can Jack help save Jackie’s future. Either way the film delivers a stylish somber mood, excellent acting and a tight and moving script. Here Brody shows that he can carry a major modern picture and Knightley shows that she doesn’t need to be pretty, or even pleasant, to be an engrossing character. Depictions of war and violence to mental patients might be a bit more graphic than necessary, but they give the film a visceral and gritty feel. Though the film travels back and forth through time it doesn’t get lost in time or in plot devices and it keeps itself focused on the need people at the center of the intrigue.