The IMDB listing for 1991’s Dead Again puts it in the genres of crime, drama, mystery and thriller. The one it leaves out is comedy, which is how I will remember this feature. It is so slyly a comedy that not even the film itself might not realize it is one.
I will concede one problem I faced is my difficulty taking Kenneth Branagh seriously, and he both stars and directs here. His co-star is Emma Thompson, his wife at the time. I have enjoyed performances by them in some movies or shows but, in general, I find both too self-aware in their acting. They remind me of the irritating drama kids in high school who were always desperate for the spotlight. Today, he is a Knight and she is a Dame of the British Empire, which feels fitting somehow.
This movie finds the couple in interwoven timelines alternating between events in 1949 and those in the then-present of 1990. In the past, he was a famous conductor sent to the chair after being convicted for stabbing her to death with a pair of scissors. I guess the last thing he conducted in that life was a great deal of electricity. In the present, he’s a private eye trying to help her, an amnesiac, recover her memory.
In the past, the couple lived in a mansion that, decades later, is transformed into an orphanage. The plot thread set in the present begins with her scaling a wall and sneaking into that institution one night. Any person with even the most remote connection to reality would be calling the cops on her but, no, the head of the orphanage calls in Branagh’s P.I., instead.
Even this early in the runtime, I started wondering if this was meant to be a parody of this kind of thriller that was so popular around that time. The lead priest barks orders so angrily, he might as well be literally foaming at the mouth. While he’s doing that, Thompson is the courtyard, looking a soccer ball in her hands with a level of confusion suggesting she might be an alien. I laughed hard at the matching cut showing a concerned nun and a ragtag bunch of orphans who just want their ball back.
Further suggesting this is a comedy is a supporting performance by Robin Williams. Yes, he has been in serious films, but he is given way too much latitude in doing his trademark motormouth shtick. His character is a former psychiatrist who is now stocking shelves in a small, ethnic grocery of some sort. In his few moments here, he is allowed to ramble on and on, largely about such topics as past lives and karmic retribution. I guess it is beliefs in things like that which started his downfall. His character is angry, but the performance is largely “angry funny”, as was the rage at the time (so to speak). At one point, Williams calls Branagh a dumb dick, and I wondered if he knew the cameras were rolling.
The central conceit of the plot is whether the Branagh and Thompson in the present are reincarnations of that earlier couple and, if so, will one of them murder the other. I don’t believe in reincarnation, though I will accept it in the world of a given movie. But even then, I doubted these two today would look exactly like their past selves unless they were actually blood relations to those people.
Helping these two get in touch with their previous selves is Derek Jacobi, as a hypnotist who abuses his abilities to get inside information on antiques he might acquire for his store. Wayne Knight is interesting as a friend of Branagh’s who is eager to assist in the investigation. I almost would have rather seen a film about these supporting characters than I would about the leads.
But then we would have missed a finale so over-the-top, so deliriously batshit, that it confirmed my suspicions this is a secret satire of the genre. Much of this will take place in an apartment where a character is supposedly so obsessed with that murder in 1949 that all of the artwork there incorporates scissor imagery into them. There’s Dali’s famous melting clocks, except it is now melting scissors. There’s Michaelangelo’s God reaching out to the hand of man, except this time it is to pass the shears. You can probably imagine what happens with the Mona Lisa. Really, there is no way this could have been intended to be taken seriously.
And still I have yet to mention the worst performance here. I did not believe one millisecond of Andy Garcia’s portrayal as a writer and rogue with designs on the newlywed Thompson back in the 1949 storyline. But Garcia does get the one genuine and clearly intentional laugh in this picture when his elderly, post-tracheotomy iteration permanently puts Branagh off cigarettes when he smokes one through the hole in his throat.
Perhaps the most genuine surprise in Dead Again is an architectural cameo, courtesy of North Hollywood’s High Tower Court. This distinctive neighborhood, nestled high in the hills, is accessible via an elevator in a curiously isolated tower. It was prominently featured in Altman’s The Long Goodbye, which was a slyly skewed reassessment of the private detective trope. Dead Again may be a similarly dry parody of the genre. If not, then it is a deeply terrible film.
Dir: Kenneth Branagh
Starring Kenneth Branagh, Emma Thompson
Watched on blu-ray