17. Dead Again

Murder. Betrayal. Amnesia. Romance. Jealousy. Noir. Mystery. Secrets. Reincarnation. No it’s not Peter Falk’s classic description of The Princess Bride, but the ingredients for one of the best thrillers of the 1990s. Modern mysteries are usually a trifling, thankless exercise swimming in the shallow end of courtroom dramas, slasher films and predictable Keyser Soze-like twists. Kenneth Branagh’s Dead Again breathed fresh air into the genre by exorcising the elements of a bygone era and resurrecting an awareness of how entertaining a great mystery can be.

Opening with a bravura credit sequence where newspaper clippings inform us of the murder of Margaret Strauss, whose famous composer husband, Roman, was convicted and executed for her slaying. Flash forward some 40 years to an amnesiac whose nightmares are haunted by the tale of the couple and who must find her place in the world with the aid of a private investigator and an antiques dealer with a minor in hypnotism.

Their correlation to the Strauss history is directly associated to the audience’s perception that Roman and Margaret are also played by Kenneth Branagh and Emma Thompson. Director Branagh and cinematographer Matthew F. Leonetti use black-and-white to differentiate the past from the contemporary, a clever visual tactic to be sure, but also one that recalls the great gothic mysteries of the 40s such as Rebecca and Laura and expresses the sorrowful loss of time and true love.

 Visual pleasures and first-rate acting never to go unnoticed, but Dead Again succeeds in every respect thanks to Scott Frank’s masterful screenplay. Frank, who has gone on to pen such respected titles like Out of Sight and Steven Spielberg’s Minority Report, knows the power of the little details. Grand flashes can serve as a wonderful outline to any narrative, but it’s the little things that transform a good idea into an ingenious piece of storytelling. The small particulars buried within Dead Again are the kind that only stand out upon a second viewing as little clues to the puzzle that will have you smacking your head in disbelief that you missed it the first go around.

Running jokes about smoking and Branagh’s visual flair for the constant reminders about the murder weapon (scissors) both pay off in enormously satisfying fashion. Frank continues to raise new questions seemingly every minute and finds a way to answer them all without playing tricks on the audience. What is the truth behind the death of Roman’s first wife? If Grace was Margaret, is the past destined to repeat itself? Is there even a mystery to be solved or is tragedy just in the cards?

Branagh was the new wunderkind in Hollywood after the critical acclaim of his debut production, Henry V, in 1989 had him labeled as the next Laurence Olivier. Dead Again   proved Branagh was the real deal, displaying a true aptitude for the theatrics of cinema that would have made Hitchcock proud. Without taking us for dyslexic puppets, Branagh is able to realize Frank’s screenplay and build suspense sans showing us the blueprints for why we should be tense. The blowing away of hair and the seemingly inconsequential piano player downstairs all furnish us with sequences that aren’t foreshadowed to be suspenseful. Up-and-coming filmmakers should study how the use of a name can produce a bigger shock than the thousands of false-alarm cat sightings and musical stingers used to jolt viewers.

Great suspensers build their foundation on a cavalcade of back-story and slow evolving first and second acts, until all the information comes crashing into itself only to be reexamined through plot twist after U-turn. Dead Again does just this, steering you headfirst into a final half hour whose destination keeps changing until the final fork in the road is plunked directly through your car horn and you’re propelled into a spinout. During my days as a video store employee, whenever someone would ask me for a great mystery or a great thriller, Dead Again was at the top of my list. If you haven’t seen it yet, put it at the top of yours. (Erik Childress)