Jackie Lentz: Blog #2 (Student Topic) The Jacket

The Jacket illustrates the desire of mankind to play God and the disastrous effects or at the very least futile effects that can have. Adrian Brody’s character tries to figure out how he dies and then do whatever he can to prevent it. He finds the old doctors, visits the hospital, and all with Jackie by his side. He wants to change what he discovers cannot be changed. What is unique about this film however is that while he cannot change fate he sidesteps his second death by escaping into the future. At the conclusion of this film, it didn’t seem fair. Why would he be allowed to change the future for the better and then go on to experience it as well. All the stories that I have read end with the hero saving the world but with a sacrifice of his own. Where is Brody’s sacrifice!? Is it because of the war and PTSD that he had to go through, or because he was convicted of a crime he did not commit, that he is able to get to his form of heaven? My favorite film, Shawshank Redemption, has a character who is wrongfully convicted of a crime for which he goes to prison and is raped and verbally abused by the warden but eventually escapes. I don’t understand why I can look at the journey of Andy and say to myself, his escape to the beach he what he deserves, he has earned his release from a society that has failed him, but when I think of Jack I don’t feel his debt has been paid. He helped one girl, and then he ended up sleeping with her so anything he did for her from there on out has to be at least a little connected to trying to sleep with her again. Maybe its because the audience does not get to witness his whole journey, but is privy to just snippets, that I feel like, from what I knew of him, he just didn’t earn better life that he created for himself. Jack tried to play God to stop his death but in the end he plays God by creating his own Heaven. Although maybe we are all given that opportunity, we can pick what is our perfect heaven and that’s what we get when we arrive. That would be nice.