Usually the amnesia is the hardest bit to swallow. The amnesia in Dead Again is particularly unpalatable, because Emma Thompson shows up at a Catholic orphanage without any memory nor with any ability to speak. No explanation is ever offered for her disease, not a grain. No cracking the skull, no mysterious drugs, no trauma, nothing. Just a little all-purpose Hollywood-style amnesia to get the plot rolling.
But spontaneous amnesia slides down the esophagus rather easily compared to hypnotically-induced past-life regression, huge trenchers of which we're expected to bolt and guzzle. I couldn't do it and the film became ridiculous and ridiculously baroque, gimmicky, inhuman. A waste of Kenneth Branagh's extraordinary talent. And the music –portentous, dictatorial, distracting.
I saw this movie when it first appeared, in 1991, and liked it. What was I thinking? My salad days, when I was green in judgment.
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