Gourt Home::Gourt :: Dead Again
- For the music band "Dead Again" see Dead Again (Band)
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.
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 os 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?
Trivia
- The scenes which take place in the 1940s are in black and white, while the present-day scenes are in color. 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.
- Some have also compared this movie to progressive metal band Dream Theater's Metropolis Part 2, Scenes From a Memory, a concept album with an arguably similar storyline, as well as the companion concert DVD, Scenes From New York.
External links
"Dead Again"