Kenneth Branagh's Dead Again - film review

main character in the opera he is composing - in whose mask he writes the music and apparently committed the murder? What does his strange notion of death mean? By this stage the audience can see the film is not just about a murder and who was responsible. It is also to do with afterlife; about love continuing beyond the grave; fate; and, most importantly, the possibility of the horror repeating itself in the life to come.The anklet Roman later gives Margaret is a symbol giving continuity to these ideas first raised in the opening sequence. It is said to mean that when it is given by a husband to his wife, they become two halves of the same person. Even death is said to be unable to separate them.The sequence builds further, with mounting anticipation, as Roman leaves his cell walking towards execution. All the while he calmly continues with his song, but we become aware that he has hidden the scissors up his sleeve. Speeding in pace, the scene shows Roman walking down Death Row, with other inmates' hands stretching out beyond the bars, beating mugs on the bars, shouting in fury. Roman remains quite detached from their violence.Baker, realising that something is wrong, chases after him shouting "No! No! Stop him!" Roman walks to a woman who, to our puzzlement, we can identify as Margaret (already his victim). He says, "These are for you!" and plunges the scissors into her neck. A sudden switch gives us colour, and a woman just like Margaret in a state of terror screaming. This has been her nightmare vision (in the present) seen from her point of view. A second opening sequence - though much less dramatic and tense - then initiates the Mike/Grace plot, and the 1990 heroine's amnesia is investigated.There are several instances of cleverly conceived camera work over the opening sequences of the film. The scene where Madson holds his first full session of hypnotic regression is well handled. As his voice dominates the proceedings, the camera begins a slow circling motion, focussing on him at first, then floating round behind him. Madson's voice has Grace floating out of herself and into her past self, under his power, so the camera movement is highly appropriate to the scene. By the time the camera, and out attention, have been drawn behind Madson, the hypnosis has worked and we can now see Grace opposite him, under his influence. The camera then continues round to her, as she becomes the focus of our attention, and narrates her past life experience. The whole movement effectively conveys Madson's strange power as hypnotist and the fascination we feel about what she has to tell us.Music is also used to develop the narrative. Quite apart from the dramatic opening (see above) and the Bernard Herrman imitation theme, music is used to give further credibility to the reality of reincarnation and to set mood. When Grace sees a piano in a cafe, she is drawn to it immediately and strangely it is the main tune of Roman's opera from forty years ago that comes into her mind. When Mike comes over to join her it is the same tune he spontaneously plays, if slightly jazzed up. In this way music has demonstrated that they are indeed reincarnations of the earlier couple. A brief flashback of Margaret saying "Is this from your opera?" suggests fragments of Margaret's past life are coming to us through Grace. Later, when Grace is beginning to worry about the danger there might be in Mike's supposed link to Roman, his violent temper is revealed. As he passionately insists that he is not Roman he pursues her round his flat, giving her every pair of scissors in the place. This is accompanied by the sound of a neighbour's loud piano practice, whose cacophony is perfectly matched to Mike's storm of discordant feeling.In Dead Again Kenneth Branagh takes advantage of many features of film noir, like many other film-makers since the heyday of the genre. The mood of pessimism in such films, the feeling that the characters in it are fated to fail, the atmospheric shadowy look, have attracted directors and audiences powerfully since the 1950s. We are certainly given the feeling that Mike and Grace's love is a hopeless cause, overruled by fate and condemned to end again in bloodshed. However, recreating film noir is no easy task, and can all too easily result in empty pastiche, where a concern with style overwhelms content.Much of Branagh's celebration of the noir genre is compelling, supporting the story well. The alternation between monochrome and colour is effective in conveying two different stories in two different times. Furthermore, black and white lends itself very well to a noir atmosphere, exploiting darkness and shadow, as in the jail scene.Flashbacks are a feature used repeatedly in film noir and Dead Again depends on them heavily to transfer between the Roman/Margaret and Mike/Grace worlds. Thus we slowly work from the enigmas set up in Margaret's opening nightmare towards the truth.Another throwback to the older genre is the use of voice-overs. Usually, in the classic films of the noir genre, these would consist of the principal male character setting the scene and mood, explaining how the nightmare situation began which led to his police interrogation, death sentence etc. In 'Dead Again' the voice-over is taken by Grace under hypnosis, telling the Roman/Margaret story from her past life. The result of this is a much softer tone. Rather than the irony and world weariness of many a hard boiled male detective or criminal, Grace delivers lines like 'Roman had given Margaret the wedding day of her dreams'. While using a typical noir feature, then, Kenneth Branagh does not much develop the noir atmosphere with it. In attempting to give us both a noir mood and a romantic mood he may well be taking on the impossible. When the mood does darken with Roman's groundless jealousy, the voice-over has ended. Housekeeper Inge's account of Margaret's death is also in voice-over, and it has more of a noir feeling, with characters overwhelmed by circumstances. It comes very late in the film however.The black and white prison scene powerfully calls the old genre to mind. In the cell with Roman we feel the claustrophobia of the place, shadows and bars closing in on him just like his imminent execution. He has no future, in the condemned cell, so a noir pessimism is part of the scene too. It is all the more strange then that he is so calm, ironic and mysterious. The shadows concealing Roman's eyes for most of the scene point up his mystery and ambiguity. Is he promising future happiness or revenge when he says, face emerging from the shadows, "This is all far from over"? In fact, Branagh puts a lot of effort into keeping us wondering about the true nature of Roman throughout the movie. The noir elements he uses contribute a lot to this uncertainty.Rain, thunderstorms and night scenes feature heavily in both the noir films and Dead Again . At some points these effectively develop atmosphere (when Margaret awakes in terror from the Death Row flashback), and the night of Margaret's murder (when the house throbs with hidden violence inside while engulfed in natural violence from outside). Some of these scenes may be more gothic horror than noir influenced, perhaps pointing to Hitchcock instead. The fact that the romance between Mike and Grace becomes realised during a downpour in which they dance cheek to cheek on a rooftop before becoming lovers, may blur the lines of the other rain and storm scenes, undermining the noir mood once again. The last scene, in Grace's flat, gains in atmosphere from its night setting. Grills, shadows and scissors blades all add to the sense of menace about what is to come, though being in the present it cannot exploit monochrome and shadow as the prison scene, for example, does.Proof of Branagh's serious interest in the noir genre comes in the scene where Mike confronts Inge, Roman's former housekeeper. Here he sets up a parallel in the film Inge is watching on video when he comes in. It is noir classic "Sorry, wrong number", and Barbara Stanwick's role as the bedridden woman in great danger from an approaching murderer is echoed by Inge's plight. Immediately after Mike's departure, her son Frankie kills her, with a sleazy charm reminiscent of Peter Lorre (important film noir icon) for betraying him at last - the real murderer of Margaret.The amnesia theme is a recurrent one in film noir, dating from the novels of noir source writer Cornell Woolrich and featured in a number of classic films of the genre. Grace's predecessors as amnesiacs include such noir icons as Joan Crawford and Dan Duryea. Clearly then, Emma Thompson (Grace) and Kenneth Branagh face quite a challenge in getting the role right. Hitchcock too made use of the amnesia theme in Vertigo and his influence is also prominent in Kenneth Branagh's essay in the psychological suspense thriller - a genre which Hitchcock made his particular field from the 1930s to the 1960's.For Hitchcock, the point of making a film was to give the audience an emotional experience. To this end he developed techniques of his own to build tension and control suspense. He also utilised noir conventions to a degree where it suited his purpose. Nonetheless, although many of his films are dark in subject matter and treatment, he was not a mainstream film noir director. While films like Notorious and Rear Window have similarities with noir films, they are on the margin of the genre only. This did not stop him making use of a noir mood and the features which can create one.Like Hitchcock's Vertigo , both films are double narratives. In Hitchcock's film, ex-policeman James Stewart trails, then falls obsessively in love with Kim Novak, only for her to kill herself jumping from a tower. In the second half, deeply disturbed by the experience, he transfer his obsession to her double, until he arrives at the truth - both women are one and the same. He has been the victim of a cruel deception.In Dead Again , the stories of one relationship from 1948 and one from the present are developed together, until the entanglements linking them are at last understood. In this film the two relationships develop side by side, while in Vertigo they unfold consecutively. That difference aside, they are both films in which an enigma is eventually resolved, after prolonged suspense and some involved speculation on the underlying psychology of the characters.Kenneth Branagh's manipulation of time follows his master's precepts. In the death row scene, for example, we have Roman's haircut in virtual real time, dwelling on Roman's face and the song he is crooning, while shortly afterwards - as he goes to his death with the scissors up his sleeve - time is compressed. We have shots from a variety of camera angles as he walks along a corridor, but with each cut some of the steps he takes are lost and he moves suddenly closer to the figures in shadow awaiting him beyond the cells. We seem to lurch forward with him, from his point of view, and so our anticipation of what is to come is quickened. When Mike and Grace meet, their returned looks are accompanied by longer shots to expand time briefly. From that the audience expects they will be linked in love. Further on, when Roman jealously advances towards Margaret and Baker in the garden at Otto Kein's party, he again comes at us with a suddenness and speed into extreme close up which is physically threatening. Sudden compression of time after other more extended time in other shots, combined with an extreme close up of Roman in monster mask, makes this an effective scene.Like Hitchcock, Kenneth Branagh strives to keep the audience on a rollercoaster of expectation, slowing us down and speeding us up until we feel emotionally swept along with the film.Equally, Branagh regards suspense as a higher priority than mere plausibility. After all, if an audience is fully occupied identifying imaginatively with a character's immediate difficulties, questioning how he or she got there is probably the last worry on their minds. This is why we need not worry why we are presented with images of Roman or Mike with raised scissors, even though the only flashback Grace could ever have had of her past life murder should have been of Frankie. Audience concern about whether Roman and Mike are good or evil is far more important than detailed reasons for what we see, however bewildering it might appear. It may be fair to say, however, that Branagh uses flashbacks which lie - a bad habit in Hitchcock's view.Hitchcock images are quoted in Dead Again . The scissors, which are a repeated motif within the film are borrowed from Hitchcock's Spellbound and, in particular, the dream sequence designed for that film by Salvador Dali. In the older film a pair of scissors is seen shockingly, cutting into a human eye. Hitchcock used scissors as a murder weapon in Dial M for Murder , and we do associate scissors with the myth of the Fates - blind women with scissors who cut the threads of people's lives. Hitchcock's use of this image is careful and sparing reflecting his macabre, dry sense of humour, but Branagh's is excessive. It may be effective and justifiable to pan to a pair of scissors whenever it seems that Mike and Grace are becoming closer (as a reminder of their 'past') but the whole film is full of scissors, including the scene where Mike shows his violent, Roman like temper giving Grace several pairs from all over the flat, and becoming uncontrollably passionate in the process. The overplaying of the image happens most explicitly where, on Grace's eventual discovery of her real identity, she finds she is an artist, made amnesiac after a mugging. When the main characters go to her flat, they see how obsessed with the scissors imagery her unconscious mind has been. Pictures and sculptures including scissors blades abound, some looking just like Dali canvasses (with melted scissors instead of clocks). In the murder sequences, the scissors are always raised in the same posture as the murderer's knife in Hitchcock's Psycho . Sadly, the scissors sculpture Mike uses to impale Madson upon in the closing scenes of the film have a shaky, cardboard look, undermining the climax, and betraying the film's low budget.Hitchcock's films reflect the fascination people of his time felt with psychiatry - still in the 40s and 50s a new science. Spellbound and Vertigo make explicit references to using psychiatry to explore the depths of the human ( James Stewart's) mind, and Dead Again likewise contains a doctor character and a hypnotist, who offer some rationalisation of Grace's amnesia - though admittedly from a rather Californian 'New Age' perspective, reflecting some of the pseudo-scientific concerns of our age.The lift shaft at the flat is a phallic tower of no obvious relevance to the building, but makes a reference to the tower in Vertigo from which the amnesiac character threw herself to her death. Perhaps some Hitchcock fans might be driven by this to expect Grace to suffer a similar fate, though it is ultimately a red herring.Hitchcock's main musical collaborator through the 50's was Bernard Herrman, and Patrick Doyle's musical score makes use of a theme which is strongly reminiscent of Herrman's Vertigo and Psycho scores. This rhythmically driving theme promises serious, troubling events to come and harks back to the Vertigo theme which is first used when James Stewart has the traumatic, near fatal, rooftop experience.It also relates to the Psycho theme when Janet Leigh makes her escape by car after stealing money. Both are instances of exemplary matching between music and narrative. Patrick Doyle certainly adds to the effectiveness of those scenes where his music is used, and further reminds the audience of Hitchcock's influence on the film.Some of Hitchcock's grim humour can be identified in the way Kenneth Branagh deals with the sub-theme of cigarette smoking. Hitchcock regarded humour as a helpful and appropriate addition to the suspense atmosphere, mainly as a tension breaker which could help all the more to manipulate emotion. Mike is trying to give up cigarettes all the way through the film. Ex-psychiatrist Cozy Carlisle offers very 'Californian' advice on smoking - you're either a smoker or a non-smoker - decide which you are and be that. Gray Baker, Roman's rival, is a compulsive smoker. When we see him much later in life, he is dying (probably of smoking) but is still desperate for a cigarette, despite a thorax operation which leaves him with only a hole in his throat to speak through. This meeting brings Mike key information allowing him to solve the Roman/Margaret mystery, but also convinces Mike that he really no longer wants to smoke - particularly a shot of Baker exhaling smoke through the hole. Thus Kenneth Branagh integrates the Baker scene with the narrative, showing him as a once handsome figure reduced to a grotesque character, like other extreme-looking characters in film noir (eg. sinister fat men, untrustworthy, weasly little men, etc). It is a touch which does fit the noir mood well. Moreover, Mike's quiet refusal to accept back his cigarettes, saying, "I just gave up!" seems very close to Hitchcock's macabre humour.The way the anklet is presented is much like Hitchcock's use of a 'McGuffin'. Hitchcock would hang the plots of his films on trivial stories which would not bear much serious investigation. He regarded the inherent drama of the tale as of greater importance than the explanation behind it. Hitchcock called such plotting devices 'McGuffins'. Thus we can take on trust the idea of past lives, and even the notion that the anklet is what caused the couple to be linked by fate forever, as long as the narrative itself is delivered in a compelling way.In the area of Representation, the film attempts to give the audience certain stereotyped characters - in some cases with a new twist - and is again a mixed success.I have already mentioned Roman and the powerful, mysterious way in which he is presented (central European speech codes, beard, dark cloak, gothic mask, black and white lighting effects). We are kept wondering about Roman throughout the film, and the success of his character is the main source of the film's appeal. Add to this his complex character, his artistic, explosive, Beethoven-like temperament, his lack of necessary money, his romantic loving side, and we have a character with some power to involve the audience.It is unfortunate that Mike, his alter ego, is rather less impressive. As a noir style investigator, or James Stewart-like obsessive, he is a disappointment. He is too boyish to be a tough, hard-boiled type of private eye. (It would be a pity if his tendency to throw in spurious swearwords was actually an attempt to convey toughness. In my opinion, it simply jars). He has a mild, nervous, quick spoken manner, and seems more upwardly mobile than any self-respecting Philip Marlowe character can be. British sports car, his smoothness in deducting a percentage when on the Cozy Carlisle case, an occasionally supercilious manner - e.g. his retort 'fuckin' fruitcake' after Carlisle has attempted to offer him advice on smoking). He has a certain amount of charm, particularly in the role of lover, but completely lacks Stewart's qualities of inner turbulence as a neurotic hero, trying to prove himself different from what others think of him. It is important for the film to establish that Mike has the same capability for violence as Roman which is why the scene with Mike in a passionate rage, giving Grace a seemingly endless series of scissors, accompanied by a neighbour's piano practice, is of great importance. At another time he explains to Grace, "I always had this kind of temper and I used to beat up on the other kids. He (Brother Timothy of St Audrey's) straightened me out". He says that otherwise he would probably have ended up in jail. Another important scene for Mike is when he comes to Grace's flat after speaking to Inge. He has the anklet with him to prove that it was Frankie (Madson) who took it, but Grace refuses to let him in, by now in fear of her own life. He again demonstrates his capacity for violent rage, breaking down the door to get in so that his behaviour is still ambiguous - lover or murderer? - right to the end. These moments give Mike enough of a dark side to carry the parallel with Roman. Overall, though, he seems rather superficial as a character.The female characters have less depth again, though there are a couple of signs that Margaret comes from the mould of noir femme fatales. She certainly has a strength and presence that Grace never achieves. Her strength comes across in her first moment on screen. The scene is the concert hall. Roman, who terrorises everybody, is utterly discomposed when Margaret winks at him. In that instant we see her power over him in microcosm. Her costumes and hairstyle give her a presence and glamour that is lacking in Grace. Later, there is a moment when Margaret comes downstairs. Gray Baker looks at her, and the way she stops for a moment to look back, the way time is expanded a little, creates a misleading impression of a woman responding to Baker's look. In fact, this is unsupported by the rest of the action and Margaret has few other strong moments in the film. She is otherwise a decent woman, in love with her husband, trying to help him overcome his unreasonable jealousy. She is a passive victim, suggesting that female representation has made no progress in the film since the 1950s, which is misleading. Once again, there is little character depth.Grace is able to inspire sympathy as the amnesiac girl, but she does not grab attention in the way that Hitchcock's Kim Novak does. She wears a mask of anxiety at first but the part carries very little weight in the film. Roman and Margaret seem the more important and interesting couple of the two. Ultimately, the female roles are weaker, more passive and less interesting than the male ones.Andy Garcia's cameo role as Gray Baker amounts to more in the film. Our first sight of him is his feet, raised up to a car window. Recovering from yet another hangover, unshaven and forever smoking, he gatecrashes the Strausses' wedding reception. He is quite taken with Margaret, to whom he confesses that life since the war is boring. He wants another war. He has a kind of cynical charm, which we see most clearly in his attitude to smoking. He jokes that he rolls his own to cut down, but merely now rolls them faster. Smoking turns him into a grotesque figure at the end of the film, but if we look closely at him, underneath his immediate charm, all his attitudes are already grotesque. He is willing to try and take Margaret away from her husband, spreads rumours to her about Roman, with only selfish motives. When Roman knocks him into a fountain, they become rivals and enemies. As a catalyst, at two important stages of the story, Gray Baker is an interesting force for disruption and, eventually, resolution in the film.Robin Williams, as Cozy Carlisle (ex-psychiatrist; supermarket shelf-stacker) plays a role that was made much of in the film's advertising. His appearance promised a thriller with entertainment value as well. His role is typically zany, peppering his lines with a mixture of wisdom, dangerously extreme opinion, lustful comments and strong language. In his role we find some reason to take the idea of regressing to an earlier life seriously, but he also suggests to Mike that he should kill Grace, such is the danger he finds himself in. This advice turns out to be a complete red herring, but does help convince us of the danger of fate causing a second tragedy under what Williams calls 'the karmic credit plan'. It also helps Grace towards a distrust of Mike, making her suspect he will try to kill her again. Partly because of this she arms herself with a gun and shoots Mike at the end of the film.It is significant that Madson has a German accent in the black and white scenes from 1949, but an English accent in the present day scenes. As a child he can therefore seem alien and untrustworthy (and, later an appropriate person upon whom to offload Roman's supposed guilt) while for most of the film Madson seems a helpful character. Although for the most part quite amiable, we know he is also a crook, giving him an effect quite similar to that of the great Peter Lorre in the roles of the classic noir period. We are left with the feeling that his criminality will have some bearing on the outcome of the story, and eventually it does. The ambiguity of his English accent is exploited well, allowing Branagh to present him as an avuncular figure, though ultimately - to an American audience - still an alien, and not to be trusted. It is interesting to note how many villains in American films now have English accents to exploit this same US audience reaction.Madson's mother, Inge, is another important cameo role. During the scenes of Roman and Margaret's troubled marriage, she and Frankie are shown contributing to the misunderstandings. Inge sends Frankie to tell Roman of a phone call, when it is Baker phoning Margaret. Again, her foreign accent makes her alien, and one important scene demonstrates visually her part in the tragedy. When Roman has knocked Baker into the fountain, the couple arrive home in a fury with each other. They reach the stairs leading to their bedroom, but Inge is placed half way up the stairs, asking if something is wrong. She looms over them, as she does over their lives. She is in love with Roman too, and Frankie senses her unhappiness. Moments later Margaret has rushed up the stairs, leaving Inge between the couple. She has visually come between them, as shortly she will (in the person of her son) literally come between them, being the cause of Margaret's death through the agency of Frankie.The psychiatrist's role, together with the hypnotist, seems to show us the lunatic fringe of Los Angeles life, where New Age philosophies introduce some very strange ideas, for a public ready to spend money on trying them out. We see a belief in past lives and reincarnation, witness scenes of hypnotism which are said to prove it all true, and see Grace's artwork - very disturbed looking work (which might do well to earn anyone a living other than in California). On the other hand, these faddish philosophies also lead to corrupt and charlatan practitioners. Carlisle broke his professional obligations to have sex with patients. He was subsequently struck off, but some lines in his cameo performance hint that he is still sexually obsessed. Madson uses hypnosis to locate antiques from subjects' past lives. We are not told how he then uses his information, but one would think he would then have to steal or cheat to acquire them for his antiques business. Californian society, then, is seen in a less than sympathetic light because of the fact that such less than admirable types can seem to belong there.This film is a mixed success, with some very fine suspense sequences. It was clearly a low budget film, depending on a rather complex plot structure, which I suspect Hitchcock himself might have had some reservations about. He believed in the necessity of a film having clarity of line, and the duplicated roles of Roman/Margaret and Mike/Grace create problems for audience identification. Furthermore, the large number of cameo roles - while helping to sell the film to an American audience - overburden the structure of the film. Finally, Branagh depends heavily on sequences which misrepresent the truth, as I have already indicated. Hitchcock thought misleading the audience was a mistake, and spoiled a film in the end. It is cheating to tell us things happened one way, only then to go back on your word as film-maker and say it was really quite different. An audience can feel it has been led 'up the garden path' by sequences such as these, spoiling the long term effect of the film.