The opening credits of Brainstorm (1983) show a blank image distorted by static, as if from a TV set, that quickly turns into an abstract mindspace probed by science. It relates the visual perception of humans to dominant modes of media like film and television. The movie tells the story of a machine created to record our memories in order to be played back afterwards by ourselves or other people. Over a decade later, Kathryn Bigelow’s Strange Days (1995) was released, a pre-millennial paranoia neo-noir that also revolved around science fiction technology that allowed for memories to be traded on mini-discs that provide a full body experience. Strange Days follows the trajectory of Brainstorm, but through an environment that is darker, grimier, and more painful. Both films are commendable for being ahead of their time in terms of theorizing about technology and its relation to sociocultural issues. The two movies aim high in ways that could have been prophetic if not for the usual limitations of speculative fiction. Brainstorm shows a movie version of the early internet, which was probably confusing to audiences in 1983. It also tells us a story of how technological progress is commodified for exploitation under a militaristic, capitalist system. Strange Days is also about corruption, but more in terms of policing and race.
What makes the two films compelling is how they are also very much about human consciousness and the potential our minds have for expansion and evolution. They are both about memory and playing memories back for enjoyment or information, which is a clear reference to how dreams work. Dreaming involves recalling things, either from the past day or years previously, and playing them back in new ways that do not always make sense. Neither film directly states it is about the process of dreaming, but they both tell stories about people trying to harness the power of the dreaming mind, in order to control it. The conscious mind learning to control the unconscious sounds like a situation that could lead to amazing and chaotic results. Brainstorm and Strange Days also take on the complexity of how movies and media were created via a similar framework to our dreaming and memory-filled minds, and how these inventions act as a filter to influence our consciousness as well. At the heart of all the memory recordings in each movie is Freud’s central notion of wish fulfillment, which controls our desires and our dreaming minds.
Brainstorm tells the story of Mike Brace (Christopher Walken) a scientist working on a memory playback headset. He is very close with his jaded, chain-smoking scientific partner Lillian (Louise Fletcher), while also going through a separation with his wife Karen (Natalie Wood). Mike and Lillian soon find adversaries in the corporate world, who want to turn their virtual-reality-mind-movie invention into a marketable commodity. The people upstairs--as in military generals and strategists--are also interested in the technology for purposes of defense and domination. Karen’s job involves the branding and marketing of the memory playback headsets, suggesting that her effect on Mike involves a similar kind of streamlining and control, at the expense of his wild imagination. Brainstorm isn’t afraid to take on the big questions--Lillian records herself while having a heart attack and passing away, creating possibilities for the technology to be a bridge to the afterlife and maybe even god. Meanwhile, Mike and Karen’s son Chris (Jason Lively) accidentally experiences a recording Mike left out called “Psychotic Episode [Extreme Version]” which takes him on a traumatic sub-conscious trip through his greatest fears. This all plays out in a somewhat goofy final act, in which Mike is able to control the technology from remote places (“We can pump it right through the phone,” he says), causing havoc with water-activated foam and other hijinks.
Strange Days is about the futuristic LA underworld of 1999, leading up to the turn of the millennium. Lenny Nero (Ralph Fiennes) is a charismatic and sleazy dealer of illegal virtual reality mind playback recordings, most of which involve sex and violence, including “blackjack” snuff clips. The original screenplay written by Bigelow’s husband James Cameron is impressive in its sci-fi inventiveness, succeeding in creating a world that could be just a few years ahead (or in our case now, retro-futuristically 25 years behind). This world has all its own slang--“Have you ever jacked in? Have you ever wiretripped?” The ensemble cast of Strange Days is also impressive. Juliette Lewis plays Faith, an alternative rock femme fatale who is desired by many but trustworthy to none. Along the way we get Philo Gant (Michael Wincott) a manipulative music producer, Max (Tom Sizemore) Lenny’s close friend and private detective, and two corrupt cops brought to us by Vincent D’Onofrio and William Fichtner. The admittedly convoluted plot involves a Rodney King-like incident in which the cops murder rising hip hop star Jeriko-One (Glenn Plummer), needing to track down the SQUID (“superconducting quantum interference device”) clip recorded by Iris (Brigitte Bako), a peripheral sex worker. The elaborate plot is held together by Mace (Angela Bassett), a chauffeur/bodyguard for rich business people, who acts as a friend and conscience for Lenny. Strange Days plays out with a wild, glittery New Years Eve climax that wraps everything up, while also acknowledging the unpredictable mayhem to come in the twenty-first century.
These films are all about taking authentic, personal experiences and turning them into products for mass consumption. For Mike and Lillian in Brainstorm, they have to deal with the notion of selling out--giving away the machine they worked so hard to create, so their corporate overlords can get rich. The consumer tech industry wants to sanitize the psychedelic, mind-expanding possibilities of the invention, presumably to opiate the masses with a new, revolutionary distraction. Although the most modern efforts in virtual reality still do not match the science fiction of Brainstorm, there are comparisons to be made with contemporary technology. The candid nature of most of the recordings resemble much of the social media landscape on Instagram and TikTok, but of course we are still unable to literally feel what another person feels. The desire to share our personal experiences and feelings is very much a part of human interaction.
Strange Days is very much about these desires examined in Brainstorm, but it also shows how new technology can assist in amplifying dis/information and media in our culture. The Rodney King police brutality incident in 1991 is an obvious motivator for the Jeriko-One police execution in the film, and the importance of video technology in that incident provides one of the main layers of suspense in the final act. Lenny understands the importance of the body recording that provides evidence against the cops, but has to weigh whether he destroys it in order to get the police off his trail, or bring it to more trustworthy authorities. He says “This tape is a lightning bolt from god,” indicating that it has the power to change society for the better if shown to the right people. The movie is just as much about racial justice as it is about Lenny’s personal problems with Faith. Ultimately we see Lenny as a kind of fuck up, flailing around and blind to greater world issues because of personal problems, while Mace is seen as an avenging and motherly character. Watching Strange Days now, the ending is partially unbelievable, in that the cops probably would have just shot a black woman with a gun before confirming or denying that it was justified. Also, convicting police officers for crimes is still incredibly difficult, even with obvious evidence against them. So in a way the death of the corrupt police officers is an appropriate conclusion. The intimidating nature of D’Onofrio’s character Steckler, is one of the most haunting and memorable parts of the movie.
The two films operate on many levels. We see the real world social implications of how this technology can have negative or positive influences, while also getting a mix of speculative ideas on the importance of dreams and what it means to be human. As a cinephile, one of the most rewarding parts of Brainstorm is the similarities between the memory recording technology and cinema. Brace and his assistants in the lab start the recording with a large electronic slate which is a version of what is used on film sets. The seemingly magnetic tape is played back on a device that looks like a flatbed editing machine. In one of the most compelling situations posed in the movie, we see Mike’s friend and colleague Hal (Joe Dorsey) incapacitated after cutting out just the orgasm portion of a sex tape and splicing it into a loop. The experience nearly kills him, but also provides a spiritual awakening. Afterwards Hal says “It was more than just a sexual fantasy, it was a feeling I had. I’m more than I was, Mike.” It opens up questions of what it would be like to splice many memories together, frame by frame, in order to create an intentional, psychedelic sort of appearance. This kind of memory editing could also be used in relation to dreams, and how our brains process them. There is a clear mixture of dreams, fantasy, technology, cinema, and sexuality that makes up the Brainstorm atmosphere. Similarly, in Strange Days we see Lenny enthusiastic to record his experiences with Faith, almost as if the recording and re-living the memory is more important than the actual experience with her. As she asks at one point, “You wanna watch or are you gonna do?” The kind of technology in both films is able to take the inherent voyeurism of cinema to a whole new level. We not only watch what other people do, but feel what is going on in their bodies and minds.
Incidentally, these ideas overlap with the theme I covered last month about identity transference. Brainstorm and Strange Days are about the ability to be someone else at the same time as being you. It is a kind of doubling that is more akin to David Lynch’s Lost Highway (1997), than the films I covered from the 1950s-70s. In Strange Days there is a sequence in which Lenny finds a mini-disc left for him. On it, he sees the perspective of a person breaking into the apartment and looking over Lenny’s sleeping body, holding a knife up to his neck before retreating. It is a very similar idea to the scenario in Lost Highway, in which an unlabelled video tape is left on the doorstep for Fred and Renee (Bill Pullman and Patricia Arquette). Someone had broken in and recorded them while they slept. Later on in Lynch’s film, Fred completely changes bodies and identities with Pete (Balthasar Getty). Strange Days shows us a somewhat more logical situation in which people can change bodies with the aid of the SQUID technology. The murderer forces Iris to experience her rape and murder from the perspective of the aggressor, heightening her fear. Later on this is seen again, but in a more artificial, kinky experience. Brainstorm takes a more romantic approach, in which we see Mike make a mind-memory-mix-tape of sorts for Karen to experience, saving their broken relationship.
One of the most straightforward observations about Brainstorm and Strange Days is that they show the potential for dreams and memories to change reality. The technology that allows us to re-live the past also has the potential to affect the future. The films evoke dreamlike worlds, but are more preoccupied with the drama of sex and death. But what if this kind of technology was used to record people’s dreams when they are sleeping in order to study what they mean and how they affect us? The desire to harness our perception of the past in order to control it and use it in pleasurable or therapeutic ways has similarities to lucid dreaming techniques. Lucid dreaming involves being mindful of dreamstates while awake in order for that to reflect in our unconscious thoughts. It has the potential to bring the active, decision-making part of the brain into our dreams, with the possibility of having an influence within that world. Next week I will be discussing some horror films that evoke lucid dreaming, and how they relate back to the titles I’ve already covered.