Natalie Wood made her last screen appearance in this fascinating sci-fi film from director/special effects whiz Douglas Trumbull. She plays the wife of a scientist who, with his partner, invents a headset that can record thoughts and sensory experiences-up to and including orgasm and death-transferring them to videotape. Naturally, some nasty government types get interested. Wood tragically drowned before the film was completed, necessitating extensive re-writes.

Natalie Wood made her last screen appearance in Brainstorm; in fact, she died before the film was completed, necessitating extensive rewrites. Wood's character is secondary to the one played by Christopher Walken. A research scientist, Walken has been experimenting with a revolutionary brain-reading device. This wondrous machine is able to read a person's thought processes and translate these to videotape. When Walken wants to study the brainwaves of his late partner Louise Fletcher, he finds himself seriously at odds with his superiors-not to mention several ominous-looking government types, headed by Cliff Robertson. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
 

Menschliches Denken und seine Übetragung mit dem Computer: diese Erfindung sorgt für politische Wirren und menschliche Konflikte, Regisseur Douglas Trumbull bietet sein ganzes Können als Spezialist für Speziealleffekte auf.

BRAINSTORM sorgte schon während der Dreharbeiten für Schlagzeilen. Als das Werk etwa zu zwei Dritteln abgedreht war, ertrank die weibliche Hauptdarstellerin Natalie Wood. Wie es heißt, erklärte die erfolgreiche Schauspielerin in einem ihrer letzten Interviews, verspüre sie eine "instinktive Angst vor dem Meer". Dann verschwand sie vor der Küste Catalinas/Kalifornien von Bord ihrer Yacht, auf der sich zu dieser Zeit auch ihr Mann Robert Wagner und "Brainstorm"-Partner Christopher Walken befanden. Am nächsten Morgen wurde die Vermisste tot aus dem Meer geborgen.

Nach Natalie Woods Unfalltod beschloss das MGM/UA-Studio, die Dreharbeiten einzustellen, was jedoch von Regisseur Trumbull und seinen Anwälten verhindert wurde.

Gedanken und Empfindungen sind wie das Belichten eines Negativs in einer Filmkamera: Für Außenstehende nur nachvollziehbar durch Projektion. Ohne die Krücken der Kommunikation bleiben die Gedanken demjenigen vorbehalten, der sie denkt. Warum wäre es nicht möglich, die Bilder, die wir denken, direkt aufzunehmen, zu speichern und zu projezieren? Das wäre die Aufgabe eines Gehirn-Videos.

Trumbull, der die optischen Spezialeffekte von "2001" über "Unheimliche Begegnung" bis "Blade Runner" (Rutger Hauer als Roy Batty) erdachte und realisierte, ist ein ausgesprochen visueller Kopf. Deshalb sprang er sofort auf die Idee vom Sichtbarmachen der Gedanken an, als ihm vor Jahren der Produzent Joel Freedman das Drehbuch von "Brainstorm" auf den Tisch legte. Trumbull wollte aber nicht nur die optischen Effekte fabrizieren, sondern selbst die Regie übernehmen. Weil Freedman das Risiko scheute, Trumbull hatte bis dahin nur "Silent Running" inszeniert, verkaufte er die Filmrechte an Trumbull, der mit dem MGM-Studio ein Budget von 15 Millionen Dollar aufstellte und 1981 mit dem Projekt begann.
 

                               


Ausgangspunkt ist "Big Bertha", ein monströses Gewirr aus Kabeln, Magneten, Elektroden, angeschlossen an Computer und Videoempfänger. Das Zentrum befindet sich in einem Helm, einer Art elektronischer Trockenhaube. In den Helm münden hochempfindliche Sensoren, die auch die winzigsten elektronischen Ströme im Gehirn registrieren. Die an den Halm angeschlossenen Computer setzen die Milliarden Detailinformationen in Bildform um. Mosaikartig entsteht so auf einem Bildschrim das Abbild dessen, was der im Helm sitzende Mensch denkt. Da "Big Bertha" nur eine Art Empfangsstation der Bio-Elektronik des menschlichen Gehirns ist, aber keinerlei Strahlen oder Ströme ins Gehirn gelangen, ist dieser revolutionäre Gehirn-Videorekorder zunächst völlig ungefährlich.

Das ändert sich, als die beiden Wissenschaftler Dr. Michael Anthony Brace und seine Kollegin Lilian die empfangenen Gehirnbilder nicht einfach nur auf einen Bildschrim projezieren, sondern in das Gehirn eines anderen Menschen. Mit solch einem Test beginnt der Film: die Testperson sitzt in einem Nebenlabor und hat eine Platte köstlicher Speisen vor sich. Michael sitzt unter der "dicken Bertha", empfängt die Geschmackseindrücke der Testperson und kann die Speisen fehlerfrei benennen- der Versuch ist geglückt.

Der nächste Schritt beinhaltet das Aufzeichnen der Gedanken auf ein Videoband. Damit würden sich Gedanken nicht nur speichern lassen, sondern auch in die Gehirme Außenstehender einspielen lassen. Als Michael und Lilian dem Leiter des von der US-Regierung gesponserten Forschungsinstitutes ein Tape vorspielen (unter anderem eine wilde Achterbahnfahrt), ist dieser überschwänglich. Ein erster Schritt in eine ganz neue Epoche der Menschheitsgeschichte hat begonnen.

Während Michaels Frau Karen damit beauftragt wird, aus "Big Bertha" einen tragbaren Helm, dann nur noch einen Empfänger und Sender von Kopfhörergröße zu entwickeln, schaltet sich das für das Institut zuständige Regierungsgremium ein. Und dann ist es nur noch eine Frage der Zeit, bis das gesamte Projekt für top secret erklärt und vom Pentagon übernommen wird. Die Proteste der Wissenschaftler gegen den Missbrauch ihrer Erfindung für militätische Zwecke fruchten nicht.

Zu der Bedrohung durch die Machtpolitiker kommt für Michael ein privates Problem. Seine Ehe mit Karen ist zerbrochen. Als eine Art Abschiedsgeschenk gibt er ihr die schönsten Augenblicke ihrer Liebe. Er erinnert sich an die Zeit, als sie sich kennen lernten, an ihre Gespräche über den Mut, Begrenzungen zu überwinden, wie das die Wright-Brüder getan hatten, als sie ihre ersten kläglichen Flugverusche unternahmen. Er erinnert sich an ihre Augenblicke der Zärtlichkeit und Vertrautheit. Und sein Rekorder zeichnet all diese Erinnerungen auf. Eine Videokassette als sichtbares Dokument ihres Lebens, das die beiden letztendlich wieder zueinander führt.

Auch Lilian ist bedrückt von der Aussicht, dass ihre Baby Bertha der Unmenschlichkeit dienen soll. Sie ist Kettenraucherin und nicht sehr gesund. Als sie spürt, dass sie einen schweren Herzanfall erleidet, schließt sie sich mit letzter Kraft an den Rekorder an. Zum ersten Mal wird dokumentiert, was sich im Gehirn eines Menschen abspielt, der stirbt: Eine Phase der Desorientiertheit, der Entkörperung, des Horrors und des engelsgleichen Entschweben in ein Paradies.
Es stellt sich heraus, dass derjenige, der das Band hört oder sieht, selbst stirbt oder zumindest schwere Traumata davonträgt. Das Tape wird beschlagnahmt und sicher unter Verschluss gehalten.

Aber der Erfinder von Brainstorm will sein Werk lieber zerstören als in den Händen der Armee wissen. Von einer ganz gewöhnlichen Telefonzelle aus leitet er die Zerstörung der Zentralstelle von Brainstorm ein, kommt an die Zugangsdaten des Tapes und erlebt Lilians Todeseindrücke am eigenen Leib. Aber noch bevor er selbst stirbt, holt ihn die herbeigeeilte Karen zurück aus dieser "anderen" Welt.
Brainstorm ist der erste Film, der sowohl in Panavision als auch in Super-Panavision (70 mm) gedreht und mit herkömmlichen 35 mm-Material kombiniert wurde, also aus zwei verschiedenen Filmformaten besteht. Ähnlich dem Prinzip von Abel Gances "Napoleon" fährt -verteilt über den Film- für insgesamt eine Viertelstunde die gesamte Leinwand aus und zeigt eine wahrhaft furiose Orgie von Tricks und alptraumhaften Erscheinungen.
 

                            


Eines muß man dem Film lassen: er war seiner Zeit voraus, denn eine ähnliche Thematik (Gedanken, Erlebnisse aufzeichnen, damit anderen dran teilhaben können) hatte erst Jahre später der Endzeit-Thriller "Strange Days" gehabt, wo aufgezeichnete Gedanken schon wie eine Art Droge gehandelt werden. Auch "Projekt Brainstorm" beschäftigt sich mit der Frage, was passiert, wenn so eine, eigentlich für humane Zwecke entwickelte Maschine, plötzlich in die falschen Hände gerät oder missbraucht wird.

Dabei spielt Christopher Walken (der hier noch recht jung wirkt und noch nicht der Charakterschauspieler ist, wie man ihn heutzutage kennt) Michael, den Assistenten Lillians, der zuerst nicht verstehen kann, wieso sie sich vehement dagegen wehrt, das Militär mitspielen zu lassen und nach ihrem Tod erkennen muss, dass sie völlig recht mit ihren Ansichten hatte.

Natürlich waren die Computereffekte damals noch nicht soweit, daß man jetzt Special-Effects ohne Ende erwarten kann. Aber die gezeigten Effekte sind wirkungsvoll eingesetzt worden, allein der stimmungsvolle Vorspann stimmt einen schon gut auf den Film ein. Ansonsten bleibt der Film eher ruhig, erst zum Schluss hin wird ein bisschen das Tempo angezogen und gipfelt in dem Finale, wo Michael zusammen mit seiner Frau per Hacking den halben Produktionsbetrieb durcheinanderbringt und sämtliche Roboter verrückt spielen läßt.

"Die meisten von uns", erklärt Regisseur Trumbull, "erfahren ihr Leben als allmählichen Entwicklungsprozess. Und wir sind mit dieser Realitäts‑Schablone so zufrieden, daß wir selten erkennen, daß alles, was wir wahrnehmen, nur ein Bruchteil dessen ist, was wir tatsächlich an Erfahrungen machen. Ebenso oft jedoch" fährt er fort, "geschieht etwas Revolutionäres, ein dramatischer Durchbruch oder ein Ereignis, das außerhalb unserer Kontrolle ist und unsere Perspektiven zu uns und der Welt total verändert. Solche Übergänge werden in unserem technologischen Zeitalter immer häufiger, und mir scheint, daß eine so spekulative Fiktion' wie Brainstorm' uns hilft, diese neuen Erfahrungen zu erkennen und uns auf sie vorzubereiten. Sie geschehen, ob wir dies wollen oder nicht ‑ und alles, was wir tun können, ist, uns aufzuraffen und auf Teufel komm raus zu arbeiten, damit sie unser Leben bereichern anstatt es einzuschränken, und dann das beste hoffen!'
Der "Durchbruch" in "Brainstorm" wurde von einigen möglichen Fortschritten auf verschiedenen Forschungsgebieten inspiriert, wie der Kybernetik (Kommunikation zwischen Mensch und Maschine); der künstlichen Intelligenz (Computer, die fähig sind, unabhängig und kreativ zu denken); Superleitungseinheiten (für ultraschnelle Informationsweitergabe); Holographie und weiterentwickelte Computer‑Bilder (der Gebrauch von Laserstrahlen, um Abbildungen von Gegenständen zu speichern und dreidimensional wiederzugeben), und verschiedene Bereiche medizinischer Untersuchungen, wie Neuropsychologie, Neurochemie und Psycho‑Biologie: all das, was das menschliche Wissen über den Geist und das Gehirn weit über das hinausbringt, was man sichzehn Jahre früher noch kaum hätte vorstellen können.

Und da das Ausmaß der wissenschaftlichen Entwicklung in einem mathematischen Verhältnis steht, das die Grenze zwischen Realität und Fiktion schneller verschiebt als wir es erkennen können, wird die "Brainstorm"‑Erfindung vielleicht niemals geschaffen werden ‑ aber genausogut könnte sie morgen schon in den Schlagzeilen stehen.


     

"Chris is younger than Natalie was. He is very good-looking. He is a New York stage actor. All three things must have appealed mightily to Natalie. She loved the attention she got from him. In the film itself they are trying to revive a troubled marriage, and when it begins to work again their coming together is passionate. It would not have been the first time Natalie fell in love with her leading man; the great tragedy was that it would be the last time." (Lana Wood writes in her "Natalie, A Memoir by Her Sister," '84.)

"Some times never go away. The truth is I've never spoken about [Natalie Wood's death] because there's nothing to say. I think that out of respect for her and her family and children, for me to have been public in any way at that time would have been crass. I would have been insensitive. There was all that lousy publicity. In a sense, I didn't want to dignify it by responding. What was I going to say? People must know that everything was gone over very carefully by lots of people. And there's nothing to do except be sad and keep your mouth shut. It never goes away, that's just it. It was a terrible family tragedy, but obviously she went to move the dinghy, slipped and fell and hit her head and went in the water. There were dozens of boats around, lots of people, a big restaurant there. It always sounds so mysterious; there's nothing mysterious about it. She banged her head and fell in the water and she floated one way; the boat

floated another. It's so silly. People fall in the bathtub and electrocute themselves all the time, but when you're very famous..." (CW 1992)

When actress Natalie Wood died near the end of principal photography, studio executives tried to kill the film and claim the insurance, saying that director Douglas Trumbull could not complete the film. However, Trumbull's contract gave that decision to him, and he insisted on completing the film, using a stand-in and changing camera angles for the few remaining shots of Wood's character.
 

Another anecodote: Donfeld, the costume designer for Brainstorm and friend of Natalie's (his name used to be "Don Feld" but he changed it to "Donfeld" ) says that Chris was needling him with complaints about his costume, "Finally, after he wanted to change the color of his shoelaces, it came to a showdown, and I told him I was fed up. He reached in his pocket, took out a key, placed it on the table, then stared at me. Natalie and I had more or less adjoining suites at the hotel, so I knew her room number. It was the number on that key, and Walken's way of telling me who was in charge."
 

For 27 years Robert Wagner, the Hollywood actor, has refused to discuss the night his wife and fellow film star Natalie Wood vanished from their yacht and drowned.
Now, at 78, Wagner is to break his silence in the hope of dispelling rumours that he was somehow responsible for the death of Wood, the Oscar-nominated actress he had married twice, or that she fell overboard as they partied drunkenly with another actor, Christopher Walken.
In a forthcoming autobiography, Pieces of My Heart, he admits for the first time that he was jealous of Walken, whose performances in The Deer Hunter and Pennies from Heaven had made him a rising star.
He says he felt his wife was being “emotionally unfaithful” to him on the set of Brainstorm, the film she was shooting with Walken.
According to Wagner’s account, tensions boiled over during a late dinner on the yacht, which was moored off the island of Santa Catalina, near Los Angeles, after Walken suggested that Wood should star in more films instead of caring for two young children.
Wagner lost his temper and, he admits, smashed a wine bottle on the table, prompting Wood to go below to their cabin. He says that when he put his head around the door of the cabin and saw his wife for the last time, she was fixing her hair and apparently preparing for bed.
He and Walken went up on deck to cool down. At about midnight he returned to the cabin and discovered that his wife was missing. Then he realised that the yacht’s dinghy had gone too. He searched for Wood on the yacht Splendor but in vain.
“Now he thinks that Natalie heard the dinghy banging loosely against the Splendor, went to fix it and slipped on the ‘swim step’, knocking herself unconscious, and rolled into the water, and the dinghy just floated away,” said a friend familiar with Wagner’s manuscript.
“There was no conspiracy, nobody walking in on something sexual, nothing absurd like that.”
The coastguard found the drifting dinghy a few hours later, the inquest into her death heard. Soon after that Wood’s body was spotted floating nearby.
The coroner found that Wood, a former child star whose best-known roles included Maria in West Side Story, had consumed seven or eight glasses of wine but was probably not drunk. He ruled that she had fallen into the water by accident and had been dragged down by her heavy clothing. She was 43.
Wagner’s friend added: “He writes that he went through the inquest in a daze and after that he took to his bed for eight days in a catatonic state, blaming himself for her death. He’s never entirely recovered, but how can you?”

One horrible irony of her death, revealed in the book, is that Wagner had helped his wife to overcome childhood phobia about water. She had once told Elia Kazan, the director of her 1961 hit Splendor in the Grass, that she needed an antianxiety pill to step over a puddle. Wagner persuaded her to sail by naming their yacht after that film, one of three for which she was nominated for an Oscar.
Yet Splendor in the Grass was a bittersweet memory, he now admits: during the filming his wife started an affair with Warren Beatty, her co-star, which destroyed their first marriage.

In the book Wagner confesses to hanging around Beatty’s house with a gun. He apparently hoped Beatty would come out on foot so that he could take a shot at him. Wagner started drinking heavily and brooding about suicide, but a friend talked him into psychoanalysis, which he credits with saving his life.

Like Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie today, Wagner and Wood were regarded as Hollywood’s golden couple. After a brief courtship they married in 1957.
He was the star of a string of hit movies, including Titanic and Between Heaven and Hell. She had appeared with James Dean in Rebel Without A Cause.
After Wood and Wagner divorced in 1962, she claimed his obsession with golf had ruined their relationship. However, they could not stay apart.
In 1971 they spied one another across a restaurant and, shortly afterwards, Wood ended her marriage to a British film producer, Richard Gregson. In 1972 Wagner married her again on board their new toy, the Splendor.

...sie war nie so glücklich und unglücklich zugleich wie damals...
(Selbstbeschreibung Woods)

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Early on in Brainstorm, the 1983 film about the invention of a device permitting the recording of one person’s thoughts and emotions for playback by others, the scientist-hero Michael Brace retires to his room to toast a Wright Brothers model plane piloted by a photo of Albert Einstein.

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On its own, outside of being a nice bit of character development, it’s not much. But, when taken as a restatement of a scene occurring only moments before, when Brace offered a similar salute to his co-worker and lover Dr. Lillian Reynolds on the event of their technological breakthrough, something profound occurs. For this substitution of the elder woman by Brace’s birdlike symbol of visionary achievement indicates a combined meaning for the latter scientist that’s especially compelling for those familiar with the avian association of another inventor, as examined by Jungian psychoanalyst Erich Neumann in his 1959 essay, "Leonardo da Vinci and the Mother Archetype" (in ART AND THE CREATIVE UNCONSCIOUS; Princeton University Press – a response to Freud’s own essay on the topic, "Leonardo da Vinci and a Memory of His Childhood"; THE UNCANNY, tr. David McLintock, 2003 Penguin Classics). Regarding the plane/lover parallel in light of Neumann’s observations brings other elements of Mike and Lillian’s ambiguous relationship to light and in turn illuminates much of the rest of the picture, just as the amplification of isolated incidents in these characters’ lives provides similar stimulus for reevaluation and, ultimately, transcendent understanding.

A troubled production from a perennially troubled studio, MGM, Brainstorm was the center of a dispute between its director, Douglas Trumbull, and the executives who wanted to shut down the mostly-completed picture after the death of one of its lead players, Natalie Wood. Trumbull maintained that the few remaining scenes that were to feature her could be completed using a stand-in, but the studio, possibly eyeing a writeoff, disagreed. The film was brought in, finally, and released, but it was the last feature directorial job for Trumbull, previously known mainly for his revolutionary special effects work on such science-fiction films as 2001: ASpace Odyssey, the film which made his reputation and which in many ways may have defined it ever after as Trumbull dealt with the legacy of working with that film’s master director, Stanley Kubrick. As Brainstorm itself turns on the death of a key female protagonist, the actress’s passing only took the drama one step closer to reality, when the circumstances of its production were already an integral part of the fabric.

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The story’s close-knit research team, for example, gives the impression of the dedicated film crew operating under the same rubric. Lillian, as apparent mastermind, suggests either story originator Bruce Joel Rubin or the small army of screenwriters brought in to bring the film to fruition, Mike the director who takes the project the rest of the way after her work is basically finished. They are abetted by their middle-aged company-man lab assistant Hal Abramson, who wields a clapboard at one point but otherwise functions in something of a producer’s role, and game thirtysomething guinea pig Gordy Forbes, who, as the lens through which much of the film’s action is absorbed, suggests cinematographer Richard Yuricich. This is roughly the same setup as Trumbull’s only other feature as director, the well-remembered Silent Running, where a similar threesome is complemented by a detached loner who completes his visionary project after the others’ dismissal. Read Kubrick and 2001 for Lillian and the present film, however, and another level to the drama emerges, adding resonance to Mike’s barely acknowledged resentment of Lillian’s putdowns and hogging of the credit for their work (more clearly elucidated in the script signed by Robert Stitzel), as Trumbull has also expressed of Kubrick, along with his gratitude. It is this repressed hostility, in the film as well as its characters, which forms the emotional core of the drama. (..)

Trumbull spoke of wanting to create "a kind of first-person experiential cinema" (TOTAL MOVIE #3; Feb-March 2001, p.64), which he partly achieved in Brainstorm via the changing dynamics of the film frame. During the segments where characters experience others’ thoughts, the traditional, boxier screen dimensions expand to full, wide Cinemascope range to create the sensation of a widening of perception. This elastic effect is used from the very beginning, disorienting the viewer at first as the point of view switches from widescreen to the traditional perspective and back again – producing genuine disappointment when reverting to the narrower, "normal" field for the bulk of the proceedings. Yet at at least one crucial point, the formula is broken and the main character’s subjective viewpoint is represented widescreen, suggesting, on the surface, the narcotic effect of the brainstorm process carrying over into regular consciousness. On a deeper level, it situates each perspective within a single consciousness, in communion with facets of the total personality: The device puts one in psychic contact not only with others, but with oneself, as well. When Mike makes his breakthrough, it’s intended as a similar epiphany for the viewer, an evolution into a new form of awareness. (...)
 

Mike’s transformation is set into motion by a chance recording of Karen’s impressions on entering the lab, prompted by his curtness in getting her to try the device and involving her taped flashback to an argument with him at home. A new area of application opens for the researchers when Mike’s playback of Karen’s thoughts rouses instant anger in him, signaling the unit’s ability to document and transfer not only sense impressions but actual emotions, too. (Lillian’s surprised response to these "Feelings!" plays as though the concept of emotion itself were a revelation to the dedicated scientist.) In this respect, Karen acts as many women do in male-oriented drama, as the part of the anima working to connect men with their own feeling-selves – the first step in wiring Mike into the Infinite.
 

     

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Though the intention of a romantic relation between Lillian and Mike is clear, it’s drawn in such subtle brush strokes – several chaste kisses and a warmer than usual compliment – as to seem purposefully vague. This is reflective of the structure of the film itself, which unravels on the screen with no bow toward expository dialogue or traditional "movie" introductions, as though the viewer had been dropped into the picture’s consciousness as by one of its own thought-transfer devices. Factor in the nine-year age difference between Lillian-actress Louise Fletcher and her co-star, a boyish-looking Christopher Walken – whose estranged screen-wife Wood, as Karen Brace, has four years on him, herself – and you have something other than the traditional movie love affair, as is verified, finally, by the twin salutes to Lillian and the Wright Brothers model. Mike’s "plane" toast occurs after passing through a small dinner-party recital given by Karen and attended by her boyfriend Barry and son Chris. In analytic terms, such a gathering indicates the dreaming mind in creative play, peopled by the constituent parts of the ego. At its center is the disaffected anima, or the artistic feminine aspect of the hero represented by Karen, and the even-more-disaffected Self, Barry’s as-yet unexplained presence there a sort of not-Mike displaced from his own psychic family. The scene is, again, a restatement of the smaller-scale party just given in Lillian’s honor, suggesting a connection about to be made, the later event occurring on a deeper psychological plane than the earlier one in order to reveal its inherent meaning. Mike’s retirement to his private, dormitory-like room complete with mini refrigerator heightens the effect of a mind withdrawing into itself at the start of a dream while also recalling the similar loner-hero of Running, alienated from even his fellow crew members aboard a space station. The substitution of Lillian by this wooden kit powered by Genius equates the two in Mike’s subconscious, finally bringing to mind Leonardo’s so-called "vulture fantasy," as regarded by Freud and Neumann. (..) (more)
 

       

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             WHAT becomes a legend most? If you’re a movie star, it helps to follow the advice of the
                   screenwriter who wrote: "Live fast, die young, and leave a good looking corpse."