Brainstorm (Dir. Douglas Trumball, 1983)
The most remarkable thing about Brainstorm is that it was later remade as Strange Days. Strange Days has much better direction and really shows the ways new technology can be abused. But Strange Days ends very poorly, almost like it was a piece of another movie, where as Brainstorm ends poorly with high ambition. For Brainstorm attempts to literally show us what the afterlife looks like. It is a little silly and dated looking, but I don’t know anyone who could show us this in a convincing way. So it was a somewhat impressive bold move.
Brainstorm is about the invention of a new technology that allows people to experience other people’s experiences. It records a memory which then a person can playback and experience. When one of the founders of the technology records her death, the government tries to keep this experience under wraps and take over the entire technology for military purposes. Our protagonist, played by Christopher Walken, must fight to experience the memory of his colleague and prevent further abuse of the technology. In the meantime, this invention saves his own dying marriage by reminding them both of what they once had and felt.
I began by talking about the end of Brainstorm. It fails to have the poetic power to convince us of life after death. And that’s about it. The movie has a really cool idea, a future technology that many would like to experience, and the dangers that come with it. I like the clinical look of the movie. It has a lot of long shots and wide open spaces. But this fails to leave a strong impression.
Mindweird 
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