Dead Again
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For the Type O Negative album, see Dead Again (Type O Negative album)
Dead Again is a 1991 thriller film directed by Kenneth Branagh, starring Branagh and his then-wife Emma Thompson. Andy Garcia, Derek Jacobi and Robin Williams are also featured.
The movie was released in August 1991 and was #1 at the U.S. box office for three weeks.
[edit] Plot summary
The film explores the themes of reincarnation, destiny and justice through parallel narratives of a society murder in the Hollywood of the 1940s and a modern-day search for the identity of a woman with amnesia. Thompson and Branagh play the key roles in both stories.
Mike Church (Branagh), a smart-alecky Los Angeles private investigator, usually runs down deadbeats and minor heirs for his clients. One day he's called in by the priest in charge of the orphanage where Mike was raised, to help identify a woman (Thompson) who showed up at their gates in a state of shock. The woman is unable to speak and seems to have no recollection of who she is or what happened to her.
After making a few inquiries, Mike takes the woman, whom he calls Grace, to stay at his apartment, where he discovers she has a terror of anything that looks like a pair of scissors. Over the course of a few days, the two of them uncover clues to her identity, but nothing concrete; Mike finds himself intrigued by, protective of, and eventually falling for Grace.
Grace eventually regains her voice during a hypnotic session with an antique dealer (Jacobi), who claims she is having a "past-life" experience. She remembers a couple who lived during the 1940s, a famous conductor and his pianist wife, as if she were part of their history. The antique dealer finds a LIFE magazine identifying the couple as actual people, Roman and Margaret. Margaret was brutally murdered, and Roman was tried and executed for her murder.
Now Mike and Grace wonder: what was her role in the mystery? Why does the antique dealer seem so interested? And what is up with the scissors phobia?
Tagline: How many times can you die for love?
[edit] Trivia
- The movie was filmed entirely in color. After test screenings, it was decided to use black and white for the "past" sequences to help clear up audience confusion. The final frame, once the mystery is solved, fades from black and white to color.
- When the audience first meets Mike Church, he's seated in his car, which is parked on the wrong side of the street. While most people believe this is because Kenneth Branagh is from the United Kingdom (where cars are driven on the left-hand side of the road), it is actually because behind him are a number of skyscrapers that he, as the director, wanted included in the background.
- In addition to the dual roles played by Kenneth Branagh and Emma Thompson, actress Jo Anderson and the film's composer Patrick Doyle both play small dual parts, appearing in the present-day and 1940s sequences.
- A lacquer box containing an antique pair of scissors, seen late in the film, has Japanese characters on it which translate as "This is for you," one of the film's recurring lines of dialogue.
- According to the director's commentary on the DVD edition of the movie, the film has numerous in-jokes. For instance, a date seen in one of the newspaper clippings is actually Branagh's birthday, and Roman Strauss' prisoner number is the date of the Battle of Agincourt (Branagh's previous film, which had just launched his career at the time he undertook Dead Again, was Henry V).
- Branagh has said that at the time he made this film (and still, to some extent) he was very interested in the technique of uninterrupted takes, and several can be seen throughout the movie. Also note sequences such as the first hypnosis sequence at the Laughing Duke, which features an extremely complicated camera shot in 360 degrees, which involved a great deal of precise timing and technical faculty. Branagh noted that this relatively short scene was shot perhaps fifteen times, taking all day.
- Numerous clues to the true identities of the principal characters are scattered throughout the early part of the film. Pay close attention to who spills their drinks, who actually plays the piano, who is portrayed as having an acquisitive nature, and so on.
- The fact that Gray Baker never wrote again after Roman's execution (and, particularly, after their strange encounter in his death row cell) may be a reference to Truman Capote. Branagh has stated that the film's black-and-white sequences, the sections that take place in the past, are filled with visual and thematic references both to the post-war era in general and to the noir genre of film in particular.
- Some have also compared this movie to progressive metal band Dream Theater's Metropolis Pt. 2: Scenes from a Memory, a concept album with an arguably similar storyline, as well as the companion concert DVD, Metropolis 2000, Live Scenes From New York.
