Brainstorm (1983)
Brainstorm serves as a new-age science fiction film, treating the future as a mind-blowing and life-altering experience for those who participate, though the film stays grounded within the realm of science for most of the way. Although much of the film stays on the realm of the personal for its characters and their situation, at its core, the film is about the use of mind technology for better communication and understanding among people can be used to deliver transcendent experiences to the user if applied in different ways, but it also looks at the danger that technology can provide, especially to those who may become addicted, and as products that seek for the betterment of humankind can also be weaponized and used to control and destroy others.
The fact that Brainstorm would mark the last film appearance of Natalie Wood, who died on a Thanksgiving holiday in 1981, just two weeks prior to the end of principal filming, in a mysterious tragedy that resulted in her drowning under suspicious circumstances during a yacht trip and party near Catalina Island with her on-screen husband, Christopher Walken, and her real-life spouse, Robert Wagner. Her signing on to the film, in a smaller role originally slated for Kate Jackson, produced rewrites to increase her screen time, but it was her death that would further alter the trajectory of the story due to necessary reshoots to the film in order to hold it together due to not having Wood for a couple of key scenes yet to be filmed, and without the use of a body double. The studio, the financially struggling MGM, had wanted to accept the insurance money for the film, thinking that the film couldn’t continue without Wood, and even if it could, that audiences wouldn’t come out to see the movie featuring the beloved actress with the ominous cloud of the tragedy.
However, insurance money would not pay for a deserted project, but they would fund what additional money was needed in order to complete the film, negotiating a cut of the profits, if any. MGM also resigned itself that it could actually benefit in the end from the notoriety produced by Wood’s untimely passing and all of the media storm that had generated as a result of the mysterious circumstances, declining the attempts by other studios to buy out the rights to the film outright, possibly because those offers convinced them that they did indeed have a viable lucrative film on their hands after all. Still, the despondency and grief would seep into the tone of much of the new material, as director Douglas Trumbull began the difficult task of maintaining proper morale as they would embark on a new trajectory for the project using the insurance money and perhaps a body double for Wood. The body double would prove not to be needed as much, as what Trumbull had to do to complete the film involved a paring down of Wood’s scenes that didn’t jibe with the material that was amended to keep the story together and give the key pieces that push forward the plot to other characters.
The morale and grief among the cast and crew for Wood’s passing would prove especially challenging, as part of the plot turns on the death of one of the characters and how that experience would affect those who remain living. Reportedly, the relatively inexperienced Trumbull found himself over his head with a studio that refused to speak with him as he proceeded forward, as well as not knowing what to do to motivate his actors, or to properly explain the vision for the film he had in his head to them, resulting in Walken, who had already served to motivate the bewildered and bored Wood to her motivation, stepping forward to direct some of the other cast on how to perform what their roles required.
Christopher Walken is the main star, playing Michael Brace, a brilliant research scientist who is involved with a breakthrough technological experiment that will allow one person’s thoughts and experiences to be perceived within the brain of another person, or their memories are recorded to tape form to be experienced by anyone who puts on the headset to tap into it themselves. Not only are their sights and sounds replicated, but also the emotional responses, from exhilaration to terror, which can be particularly disconcerting to the virtual observer, and something they did not anticipate. Once the team finds success, things take a turn when government agents begin to appear to look into the experimental process, wanting to employ it in the field against subversives, causing a rift between the scientists and the bureaucrats funding them as to what the new technology will be used to do.
Douglas Trumbull had been known as a visual effects genius, having worked on such major visionary projects like 2001: A Space Odyssey, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and Blade Runner. He only directed two theatrically released films, breaking through with the 70s ecological sci-fi staple, Silent Running. Several sequences, especially in the ‘thought realm” are stunningly shot, especially in the use of the visual effects, which were cutting edge for its era. In a process to try to increase the realism of the in-thought images that Trumbull dubbed “Showscan”, a sort of precursor to IMAX, alternating between 70mm film and 35mm, increasing the frame rate to 60 fps (more than double that of standard film showings at 24fps), and the aspect ratio to a wider screen format for those sequences that could be called virtual reality, before its time. In combination with James Horner’s equally transcendent score, which many think ranks among his very best, Trumbull wanted to offer viewers the ultimate cinematic marriage of sight and sound as they’ve never experienced before in a theater setting.
Alas, most viewers didn’t get to see the technique used to its original intent, as theaters were unwilling to pay the extra money for costly new projectors and a new screen, especially for a film that wasn’t going to be a blockbuster, and there wasn’t a commitment by all of the major studios to continue to produce films in the Showscan format. The process also renders home video and streaming formats as inconvenient for viewers, with the VR sequences in ultra-widescreen format (black bars on top and bottom), while the majority of the film is boxed with black bars on all sides. Unfortunately, his experience in making the film, as well as dealing with the studio, soured him on film-making for a time, leading him to stay away from feature film-making altogether, working on a few shorts and theme-show attractions like the “Back to the Future: The Ride” simulation at Universal Studios theme parks. Trumbull would also create a film using the Showscan technology for the Luxor hotel in Las Vegas that played there for many years.
However, Brainstorm isn’t so much a film that is meant to allure audiences with great special effects, as they are placed judiciously and sparingly, concentrating more on the characters and their personal relationships, including the strained-but-possibly-still-viable relationship between Michael and the soon-to-be-separated wife, Karen, as well as his interactions with his colleagues, some of which is shown in flashbacks as memories are explored with the technology. Once we care about these characters, the mild thriller elements get put into place, causing palpable friction and danger once the government representatives and their alternate plans for the new technology become apparent.
The project has originally begun as a screenplay ten years prior, written by Bruce Joel Rubin, the screenwriter for future hits with inter-dimensional themes like Ghost and Jacob’s Ladder, which was dubbed at that time as “The George Dunlap Tape”. Rubin’s script was rewritten at Trumbull’s behest by first-timer Philip Frank Messina, and later re-written by Robert Stitzel, also a first-time feature screenwriter.
Themes of memories, dreams, and spirituality are explored, as one person’s memories play out to the viewer as their own surreal dream, and spirituality comes into play as the human experience and consciousness ascend to a higher calling than the mortal plane. Trumbull seems fascinated by the tech and its implications, delving just as heavily into the various permutations that such technology could inspire as much as how it impacts the characters within the story, many who are experiencing not only how others see and perceive the world, but in remembering the things that made them who they are today.
The performances are solid, with Walken appropriately muted in his emotions as a scientist whose desire to see the limits to what his devices can do, but who soon takes a turn in how he views himself when he sees how he is perceived through his wife’s eyes – not a very flattering collection of memories she holds onto. He has a natural chemistry with Wood, which some people think echoes what they may have felt in real life, and the burgeoning emotions between them feel genuine as he searches through his memories for all of the reasons that they once fell in love in their youth, then records them to revive his wife’s thoughts in how it all began. The supporting cast of character actors is excellent, with Cliff Robertson lending credibility to a tricky role that could have come off as a stereotype in less assured hands. Louise Fletcher, however, is the real surprise as a performer, fully fleshing out a supporting character to feel strong but vulnerable, and very protective to see all of their hard work remain in their own hands.
As absorbing as many conceptual aspects of Brainstorm may be, the narrative does prove to be problematic under the weight of heady notions that strain when presented within the realm of mainstream entertainment. The otherwise smart film gets especially silly during a prolonged slapstick sequence in which Michael ends up hacking into the lab facility and controlling all of the industrial robots and other automated equipment to “revolt” against the powers that be in ways that defy logic and physics. Whether such a sequence is meant for laughs or thrills, it doesn’t quite jibe with the intense build-up.
Unfortunately, Brainstorm struggled to find its audience in 1983, raking in only $10 million at the box office on a reported budget of $18 million, never cracking the top five. Having to compete in its third week with another sci-fi tinged Christopher Walken vehicle, and a much better one, The Dead Zone, which would prove twice as successful half the budget. Still, it is a film that hasn’t gotten its proper due, especially as a precursor and possible influence to more high-profile science fiction later, such as Flatliners, Strange Days, The Matrix, and Inception. One can only wonder, had Trumbull had even half of the budgets of some of these other films, and without the tragedy that nearly derailed it occurring, what might have resulted, and if he might have revolutionized cinema as we know it with a new and liberating way of telling stories by tapping into our subconscious relationship with the moving image.
Qwipster’s rating: B+
MPAA Rated: PG for some sexuality, nudity, disturbing images, and language (probably would be rated PG-13 or (more likely) R today)
Running Time: 106 min.
Cast: Christopher Walken, Natalie Wood, Cliff Robertson Louise Fletcher, Jordan Christopher, Donald Holton, Alan Fudge, Joe Dorsey
Director: Douglas Trumbull
Screenplay: Robert Stitzel, Philip Frank Messina