While watching Dead Again, I kept thinking about a couple of other films with Kenneth Branagh. The first was his directorial debut, Henry V, a deadly serious adaptation of the Shakespearean play. The second was his performance in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets as Gilderoy Lockhart, the foppish fraud of a teacher who fools everyone with his good looks, charm, and celebrity.
Buy Dead AgainIn some ways, I think Branagh’s entire career can be summed up by these two different films. Time and time again, he’s gone back and forth between Oscar-winning, highly literate, dramatic films and silly, goofy roles that shouldn’t be taken seriously at all.
Dead Again feels like a mix between the two. In some ways, it is a straightforward mystery about an amnesiac woman whose past life may hold a key to the person trying to kill her in this one. It is serious and arty and important feeling. But in other ways, it stars Branagh playing two characters, one with a terrible German accent, the other with an even more terrible, angry New Yorker thing going on. It also has Newman from Seinfeld with a whistling lisp and an over-the-top ending that would make even Dario Argento at his most baroque blush. Unfortunately, these two different styles never quite mesh together, leaving us with a film that is a bit of a mess.
A woman (Emma Thompson) appears at an orphanage. She cannot speak and has no memory of who she is or how she got there. The priest who runs the place calls on Mike Church (Branagh), a former student turned ex-cop who used to run the missing-persons department and is now a private detective.
He takes the girl in, puts an ad in the paper with her picture in it, and starts trying to figure out who she is. Franklyn Madson (Derek Jacobi) answers the ad and begins using hypnosis to see if he can figure it out. This dredges up memories of a past life where she was once Margaret Strauss (still Thompson), a celebrated musician who fell in love with a famous composer named Roman Strauss (also Branagh). But the marriage turns sour. Roman becomes jealous of the attention Gray Baker (Andy Garcia) gives her. He stops being able to compose, loses his status and money, and then she’s murdered. He takes the blame, is tried, convicted, and goes to the electric chair for it. In the present they eventually learn that the mystery woman is Amanda Sharp, an artist who had a tussle with a robber, which caused her amnesia. But that past life still haunts her.
Weirdly, no one seems to notice that Mike and Amanda look exactly like Roman and Margaret, though there are pictures of them. But Amanda does start to see connections between the past and her current life, especially when she develops feelings for Mike.
Did Roman really kill Margaret in the past? Does that mean Mike will kill Amanda in the present? The film treats both as great mysteries, but I never found myself caring all that much. It flips back and forth from the past to the present. I wish it had stuck more to the present with just glimpses of the past showing through. I was much more interested in Mike and Amanda than Roman and Margaret.
Branagh, the director, plays it straight but seems to know it is all a bit silly. He’s clearly having fun playing in the classic mystery sandbox while trying to keep things modern with a glint in his eye. Think Brian De Palma aping Alfred Hitchcock but not nearly as stylish.
Robin Williams keeps showing up as a brilliant psychologist who got disbarred for sleeping with his clients and says things like (when speaking about an impotent plumber), “A man lays pipe for a living and can’t get it up at home” and likes to call people “thumb dick.” But he’s also important in developing the psychological themes of the entire film. His character might be the best summation of the film – someone who brings depth and clarity to the story while also making dick jokes. Dead Again is a serious drama that loves to slide in all sorts of ridiculous silliness.
Weirdly, I enjoyed both sides of the story, but they never quite worked being sandwiched together. I couldn’t take the mystery seriously when there was so much goofiness going on, and the humor kept drying up when things got serious. It is a film that I mostly enjoyed while watching yet when the credits rolled, I felt unsatisfied. I like most of the performances (weird accents and all), and the mystery in the present was quite interesting. I love the idea of the past affecting the future in different ways. But something about how it all comes together just didn’t work for me.
This is especially true with the finale. The mystery of the past is solved, but then they try to make the present thrilling by not letting Amanda know what happened. But since we do, those thrills are hollow. Especially when the big showdown is intercut with the past in faster and faster installments, making everything a bit of a confused blur, and it all comes crashing down in a spectacularly overblown way that feels like it belongs in an action film not a mystery.
So consider this a mixed review. It is worth watching for the interesting parts, but set your sights a little low.
Kino Lorber presents Dead Again with a new 4K restoration of the film from original camera negatives. This set comes with a UHD disc and a standard Blu-ray. Extras include two audio commentaries – one from Kenneth Branagh and the other featuring producer Lyndsay Doran and screenwriter Scott Frank. Also included are numerous trailers for other films being released by Kino Lorber.
