Although
deemed “provocative” and at least
somewhat “redeemed by its special effects”
(according to a review by Hal Goodman in Psychology Today), Douglas Trumball’s
Brainstorm
is nonetheless one of those genre films that never quite gets its
due.
In
part, this lack of widespread appreciation may result from the fact that the
1983 movie seems to defy easy categorization.
Is
Brainstorm
a science fiction film? A horror movie? Or is it fantasy?
Like
Altered
States (1980), and Dreamscape (1984), Brainstorm
seems to straddle all those
genres. There’s even a “head film” aspect to its trippy visions of the
after-life, and the movie’s final moments of cosmic transcendence.
Secondly,
Brainstorm
is the final film of beloved actress Natalie Wood, who died in unfortunate
circumstances before the movie was completed. And the film’s very subject
matter -- regarding the death experience – seems distinctly uncomfortable in
light of the real life tragedy.
Watching
the film today, it’s difficult not to think about what happened to Wood.
And
yet despite such concerns, Brainstorm is indeed a provocative
and meticulously-crafted work of art. With intelligence and dedication, the Trumball
film imagines what might happen once scientists develop a machine that blows “communication as we know it right out of the
water.”
In
the year1983, that colorful-sounding achievement probably felt rather remote
and woefully futuristic.
Yet
in 2014, we reckon with -- on nearly a
daily basis, too -- the myriad ways
that new communication technologies change how human beings relate to one
another.
In
the span since Trumball made his film, we have seen the rise of cell-phones,
social media, the Internet, and even the first steps towards virtual reality.
This
sense of a rapidly-shifting communications landscape wasn’t always clear to
audiences in the context of Brainstorm’s original release in the
early eighties. However, time seems to have at last caught up with the
forward-thinking film. Viewed now, it is plain that Brainstorm gazes meaningfully
at the ways that a revolutionary communications device (one that records and
transmits brain impulses…) impacts every aspect of human relationships, and
even our belief systems.
Commendably,
the film is even-handed and judicious in its musings. Unlike WarGames,
Blue Thunder Superman III, Never Say Never Again or Nightmares,
which all worried about a future of computerization and increasingly inhuman
technology, Brainstorm suggests and visualizes the idea that new technology
can actually repair relationships, or bring peace of mind about our ultimate
dread: death itself. The yang to that yin is that such technology can also be
used to hurt people, albeit sometimes inadvertently.
Seen
in light of everything that has come down in the pike in the world of “communication”
since the Trumball film premiered, we might today regard Brainstorm not just as provocative,
but actually revelatory.
“We blew it, didn’t we?”
Scientists
Lillian Reynolds (Louise Fletcher) and Michael Brace (Christopher Walken) have
developed a revolutionary new technology. They have created a special
helmet-like device that can read and record the impulses of one human brain,
and then make those impulses available (on a copper-like tape…) for other
humans to view.
But
it’s not strictly a matter of viewing the world through another person’s eyes.
While experiencing a pre-recorded tape, a percipient also feels everything that
happened during the recording. They can see, hear, taste, smell, and feel those
experiences.
Lillian
and Michael’s boss, Terson (Cliff Robertson) is determined to get this new
device on the market as quickly as possible, but also invites the U.S.
Government to participate in the research. This act spurs a flat-out revolt on
Lillian’s part. She is certain the device
will be applied to purposes of spying and war. A new weapon is the last thing
she wants or desires.
Meanwhile,
Michael learns that the machine is helpful in another way. He and his wife, PR
expert Karen (Wood) have been on the verge of separation and divorce. But the
new machine allows them each to “see” one another in a new light. The invention saves -- and renews -- their romantic, intimate relationship.
When
Lillian suffers a devastating heart attack in the laboratory, she puts on the
helmet and records the death experience itself.
Afterwards,
Michael becomes desperate to screen her last tape, but again, the U.S. military
stands in the way.
“There’s more to it than just practical application and packaging.”
In
Brainstorm,
Douglas Trumball utilizes the brain impulse device as a vehicle for exploring
human relationships, and the way that advancing technology in the field of
communication can affect those relationships.
If the film seems somewhat episodic (and occasionally incoherent…) it is
because, primarily, the screenplay charts the device’s impact on several different
aspects of life, and upon several different characters or groups.
For
example, the U.S. government sees the device as something that can be used in
war, to torture prisoners.
At
one point in the film, Michael learns that the military has recorded a mental
patient’s experience of a “psychotic
break,” and that this tape can drive a man or woman to the brink of
madness. Michael’s own son accidentally views the tape, and goes insane.
For
a moment, just imagine being able to impose a psychotic break on a political
enemy, or rival. Such an assault would appear to outsiders as a natural
problem, not as an external attack.
Today, our country has debated about what constitutes “torture,” and
Brainstorm seems to understand the terrible danger of a device that can
destroy the mind, or cause terrible physical suffering, but leave no physical
marks.
But
in terms of communication specifically, our government has also entered into
clandestine relationships with commercial giants like Verizon and Google so
that it can access their data and learn more about their customer base…us. This very brand of government-business
alliance is forecast here, as the military is given total access to the privately-constructed
communications device and Michael’s laboratory. The military’s intent is to
weaponize the brain impulse device, and possibly even use it against the public.
The point, however, is that in a world of governments launching cyber-attacks
on other governments, this idea hardly seems far-fetched anymore.
One
of the other scientists on Michael’s and Lillian’s team sees the device in
another way. He watches a tape of a fellow scientist engaging in sexual
intercourse, but then cuts the tape so it is a repeating loop of the moment of
orgasm.
Like
a drug addict, this scientist eventually loses all interest in life, his job,
and his family, and simply re-plays the tape, experiencing moment of ecstasy after
moment of ecstasy. Nothing else matters.
This
subplot is no doubt Brainstorm’s spikiest and most outrĂ© application of technology,
but we know today that it is also not terribly far-fetched. A generation has
grown up watching readily-available Internet porn. In other words, Brainstorm forecasts the
ease and speed at which a communications device, like the Internet, can deliver
sexual imagery. Today, we often read of people being addicted to “Internet
porn,” or Internet porn ruining a marriage. In Brainstorm, an
intervention is necessary when a new brand of porn is invented, and it becomes
irresistible to the “user.”
The
aspect of Brainstorm that I admire most, perhaps, is its consideration of
a new communications technology as a tool for psychological therapy; for
generating empathy. At one juncture, Michael experiences life through his wife’s
eyes, and is suddenly granted a view of himself that no one has ever been afforded
in real life.
Suddenly,
he understands what it is like to live with himself; with a man who is obsessed
with his work, emotionally distant, and sometimes even emotionally absent. The
key to empathy is being able to put yourself in the mind-set of another person,
and the machine permits that. It is the ultimate in role-playing. You don’t
have to imagine your partner’s feelings anymore, you can actually experience
them. Brainstorm thus suggests that this machine could change the
nature of our most basic relationships; that it could be a useful and
productive tool for therapy.
There
are long sections of Brainstorm that concern Michael and
Karen’s relationship, but the strife is resolved when they can really
understand each other’s point of view for the first time. I don’t know about you, but my wife says she
often wonders what I’m thinking (!). Perhaps
all couple relationships could be improved if we could feel what our spouse or significant
other feels.
In
its denouement, Brainstorm goes big…and trippy.
Lillian’s
death tape is played, and Trumball escorts viewers to the very edge of
creation, and beyond. The death tape
reveals Lillian having an OBE (out of body experience), looking down at herself
from outside her own eyes. Then the imagery resolves to a series of tear
drop-like bubbles. Each one seems to represent an isolated but accessible
moment from Lillian’s life.
Once
this imagery is left behind, the film cuts to a brief view of humans trapped --
and writhing -- in fleshy-outgrowths like organic prison cells. This
composition symbolizes not merely the possibility of Hell, but the fear that
comes with being separated from the material or physical universe. We go through our lives trapped in our
bodies, and physically separated from one another, the imagery suggests.
Finally,
we follow Lillian’s disembodied soul on a journey through galactic space. We
see her soul join a million butterfly-like -- or angel-like -- organisms (more souls) as they move
gently and slowly into a warm and welcoming light. This is what comes at the end of life,
finally: a new interconnectedness, a new togetherness not fully possible in our
mortal, separate, individual form.
What
I find most fascinating about this view of the afterlife, is that it is,
simply, an augmentation of what
Lillian and Michael’s machine already accomplishes.
Their
“revolutionary” form of communication allows a different brand of togetherness.
It permits empathy, as opposed to physical (or energetic, I guess…) connection.
But that empathy, that understanding, is a real step closer to the cosmic union
portrayed in the film’s final phantasm. In this case, a communications
technology allows us to “reach out and
touch someone” in a way previously unimaginable
In
the end, Brainstorm suggests that Heaven is not a place. Instead, it is
the accumulated light of our all our souls together, shining as one. And the
communications breakthrough wrought by the film’s scientists not only reveals
this truth, but in some senses mimics aspects of that togetherness.
As
I noted above, Brainstorm moves in episodic fits and starts. Yet, at the same
time, it is never anything less than wildly cinematic. There’s an incredible P.O.V. journey on a
rollercoaster (and through a water slide…), for instance, and other visual
wonders here.
Accordingly,
one can’t help but wonder if Trumball is suggesting that the communal
experience of movie-watching (another form of communications technology) is the
real antecedent to the machine depicted in the film. We see through the eyes of
several characters in the film, including Lillian as she faces her own
death. Given this first-person or POV perspective,
the idea of feeling their emotions hardly seems out of the realm of possibility.
Brainstorm is, perhaps, a good deal better
than its reputation suggests. Louise Fletcher delivers a brilliant performance,
particularly during her heart attack scene, and the film ends on a cosmic
high-note, explicitly comparing (with its North Carolina locations…) the Wright
Bros. achievement of flight with Lillian and Michael’s discovery of what exists
beyond the boundary of death. The only place the 1983 film creaks is during an
extended action sequence at a manufacturing plant, where an assembly line goes comically
-- and interminably -- haywire.
Other
than that low point, Brainstorm lives up to its device’s PR/advertising pitch. The Trumball movie
plays (commendably) like “research for a better
tomorrow.”
Another excellent and well-written review, John. Keep up the excellent work.
ReplyDeleteI believe that if we ever were to record what happens after death it would come out as nothing, because that is how our conscious minds would perceive it (justifying the atheists). However, even though I believe it to be outside of our articulation in this incarnation we know as life, something DOES HAPPEN. My belief is that people, before actually really dying "dream" the afterlife experience, then die. Those who do not die and come back after being resuscitated are relaying that dream of going into the hereafter. So Louise Fletcher's character, I believe, is DREAMING her journey into the beyond and Walken's character is experiencing that dream. After death, the unrecordable nothing is all that's left. And that is mysterious and forever unknown to any livingi soul.
DeleteWell said and I absolutely agree. "Brainstorm" is a criminally underrated and much like another 1983 film , David Cronenberg's prophetic masterpiece "Videodrome", it is a movie that was years if not decades ahead of its time.
ReplyDeleteThe performances are first rate and the film is a technical marvel on every level including James Horner's magnificent score. Considering he made this and "Silent Running", I really wish Douglas Trumbull had kept making science fiction films.
Gotta agree with you on this one too. I haven't seen the whole film in years, but some of the images have really stayed with me, ever since my first viewing of the film. Oddly enough it was part of a "Christopher Walken" double feature. This film and "A View to a Kill". Harder to find two Walken performances at opposite sides of the spectrum. :)
ReplyDeleteHey JKM;
ReplyDeleteTotally agree, an underrated film, one of my favorites from the era and I'm glad I got to experience it in the way it was intended, on the big screen in 70mm (Trumbull was anticipating IMAX!) It's interesting how prescient the film was about the interaction of humans and technology; myself, I viewed the film as a statement about the power of "psychedelic" experiences (its interesting the the "orgasm addict" eventually attained a sort of spirtual experience) - ALTERED STATES came out around the same time, more or less (considering how long Trumbull worked on it), and CLOSE ENCOUNTERS was what he worked on immediately before and Timothy Leary himself had become an early exponent of tech-gnosis in the early 80s. I have several zines from the 70s where Trumbull discusses his post "Silent Running" plans and he would have continued in a mind-expanding vein; it's a pity that he had such a Terry Gilliam-esque filmmaking nightmare on Brainstorm. Trumbull had (and has) an excellent grasp of how FX could induce an almost spiritual experience - 2001, CE3K( the arrival of the mother ship is still a special-effects pinnacle, gave me chills at the time) BRAINSTORM, on into THE TREE OF LIFE. It's a loss that he hasn't worked more.
I don't think I agree that the film is underrated at all, though I appreciate the effort to make it look good. Most of the film has nothing at all to do with the device -- it's just another film where the military-industrial complex is out for itself and the brave little band of heroes tries to thwart them. The device would have been a lot more interesting if it occupied more of the film
ReplyDelete