Rob Dufour - The Jacket

The Jacket was an incredibly intriguing movie, and it honestly kept me thinking and picking my brain throughout its entirety. I kept trying to play with the huge loop of events that had to take place in order for other events to take place, it definitely messed with me but it was fun. Throughout a good part of the movie I thought it was trying to say that our future is predestined, which could be seen by Jack Starks finding out pertinent information about the future by living in it momentarily, and then because of this information taken into account in present day, the aforementioned future is allowed to proceed exactly as he once saw it. However this takes a strange turn when Jack is able to visit little Jackie and her mom after Jackie tells Jack her address in the future, and Jack straightens out the mom which then changes the course of both of their lives. One of the problems I saw was that it was only after Jack delivered the note to the mom that she and Jackie were truly cognizant of Jack and his life, which is how they knew he died on New Years. But initially when Jack meets Jackie in her run down home, she still knows that he died on New Years Day, but she would not have known that if he didn’t visit her and her mom on that day with the note that changed her from living that life.
One of the lines I really picked up on was when Jack says that “sometimes life can only really begin with the knowledge of death.” I think this provides certain implications as to how some people live their lives ignorant to the promise of death and let their life pass them by, but also how some live with the knowledge of death looming over them, almost as to keep them from enjoying the present. This line does refer to his experience with knowing of his own death, and the actions he took to make those last three days worthy of the last days he spent alive. Also, when the mother found out that if she didn’t change her life she would soon die, and because of her learning of a possible death, she finally began to live a life worth living.