I’ve seen my fair share of surreal films over the years, but… Jake Squared has to be up there amongst the most surreal of them all. It’s bordering on chaos at points.
Jake Squared is an indie film from 2013, as well as being surreal and chaotic it’s got a quirky streak a mile wide. The movie’s about Jake Klein (Elias Koteas) who is a middle aged film maker, who in the full throws of a mid life crisis decides to make a film about his own life to figure out what went wrong.
Which would be fine, but pretty soon he’s directing younger versions of himself all the while dealing with people from his past who are all of a sudden back in his life again.
It’s a weird one for sure – There are times when there are liberal past, present and future versions of Jake all on screen at the same time. Other times it’s kind of hard to work out which version of Jake it is we’re watching, more than once I got confused. It’s not super clear, and I don’t even know if it’s supposed to be – OR – trying to be clever.
And, honestly because of this I’ve taken a pass on it. I did watch it, but it got into a confusing mess pretty early on, I lost interest and I’m not really sure I ever really knew what was going on. I would have watched it again, but frankly I didn’t enjoy it enough to care by the end of it. I perhaps should have called it a day earlier than I did and, then I might have felt like another go. But I didn’t. And now, I don’t want to.
That’s about as honest as it gets.
Virginia Madsen plays Beth, Jake’s ex-wife. And as far as I can tell, she’s had enough of Jake’s mess as much as I did. Which, honestly, just added another layer of surreal into it for me.
She’s actually that good in it, that when I was thinking about it afterwards I wasn’t unsure if this was some kind of “message” from the film that Beth’s exasperation with Jake wasn’t some kind of metaphor for what we were having to deal with as viewers watching it.
I don’t really have a lot to say on this one – It’s worth a watch for Virginia Madsen’s performance, she does keep the film grounded, sort of. I actually dread to think where it’d go without her character.
Maybe I’ll give it another go one day, maybe it’s another that I’m not old enough, or young enough anymore, to understand. A film that you need to be in the right place and right time for.
It would of course reunite Elias Koreas with Virginia Madsen after nearly 20 years, they last worked together in the 1995 film, The Prophecy.
Availability:
Good, ish. I don’t think it’s in print anymore but I see copies of it pop up all the time on eBay for Reigon 1 and 4.
Trailer:
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