BRAINSTORM (1965; p/d William Conrad, w. Mann Rubin, story Larry Marcus)

Research analyst (psychic investigator into interior malaise; aka Oedipus) James Grayam (ambiguous part of self seeking differentiation or resolution) finds abandoned car on train tracks (self stalled at crucial point along destiny + dreamer’s body similarly shirked at x-roads btwn un/consciousness) containing KO’d blonde (dormant fem-self separated from at birth + on later development; cf similar wmn-on-road opening of Kiss Me Deadly or The Veil "Girl on the Road"); breaks window (hymen, foreboding later affair) + drives off in nick o’ time (averting her fate meeting his), discovering she wife of big boss Cort Benson (oedipal incursion, corporation à la family), Lorrie, as credits roll (long prologue predisposing/archetypal action 2B played out in course of dream).

Drives her home (after his initial "No, thank you": not driven by better judgment – ie playing out instinctual + societal imperatives) + busts in on hubby’s board mtg (negotiating "merger," nudge nudge, elder articulating subconscious intentions of jr), Cort impressed by "the young [39-yr-old Jeff Hunter] Einstein from the east" (agent from other-side-o/t-country consciousness: his own, emerging in 1st shot from Benson Industries’ lot) who informs him of problem (his purpose to unearth info obscure to strategizing rational mind) + takes him to suicidal Lorrie (both mother-connection wanting to exeunt self from psyche + anima suffering at hands of beyond-negligent businessman/world) who deliberately stalled on tracks (acting-out symbolic meaning, as both techie + administrating men’s own "stalled" sensitivities, and position of kept wmn themselves at dawn of Liberation), CB itemizing her benefits there + asking why wd she take life (question rest of film to answer in own subliminal way), threatening to neglect daughter Julie if she tries again ("her cries will go unanswered" soul’s starvation shd he lose anima; also, James’s loss of child w/i on final separation from mother).

Lorrie calls James at Benson Industries (unconscious lab separate from mansion-consciousness) + invites him to party while Cort outta town (while the superego’s away the id will play; he testifying to congressional committee/Self on financing moon [psychic outer-space] mission: both men obsessed w/ wrong kind of research + exploration while inner life atrophying) + computer (unconsc database) tells him BE CAREFUL – LORRIE IS DANGER – WATCH OUT – STOP STOP STOP (both oedipal taboo [35-yr-old Lorrie/Anne Francis w/ 56-yr-old Cort/Dana Andrews the sexualized mother] + men’s self-destructive paranoia o/t fem w/i), she kidnapping him when he declines (entering "restricted area" where "everything locked up" male i.d. impervious to fem influence); mocked by revelers (devaluation of rational thot in anarchic unconsc), he finds Lorrie putting Julie to bed (retiring own child-self as he emerges from uptight shell; "now you know the good about me awa the bad" recognizing multidimensionality of wmn + moving away from judgment o/t Sexual Mother), party "1st reward I’ve ever gotten" (endorphins endorsing relaxing of rigid rationality/masculinity) + she gives him 2nd, couple overseen sneaking out (conscience marking progress o/t late bloomer) to his place, where she resists goodnight kiss ("Forget about tonight" à la dream: unresolved oedipal desire finally met, he ready now for extrafamilial romance).

Subsequent rendezvous’ (James stuck in what shd’ve been transition à la car on tracks) punctuated by his "Leave him!"s (mental refrain the mind rehearsing fearsome project, to 1: shake both oppressive consciousness + own repressive superego + 2: separate anima from animus [aka Dragon Fight, as Cort spells out later] – itself regressive desire to both "purify" mother-img [regress it to asexuality] + differentiate self as male) rebutted by her "There’s no place far enough from him" (God/consciousness + impossibility of successfully separating fe/male parts of self); as Cort deboards plane (He returned from Congressional heaven-Olympus), butler Edwards informs him of (plane noise over dialogue both inability of mind to face confession + His environmental fury à la Edw’s self-described "storm warning"), Jas met soon after at work (CB’s mental playground) by wmn’s accusation of obscene phone calls (guilt over sexual impropriety) + own missing car (desire to transcend problematic body/desire).

Tells nervous Lorrie of gun in glove compartment (violent sexual img + 1st hint of hostile instability in own unconscious), then sent to shrink Dr Elizabeth Larstadt (sounds like "Lost It," she stable [brunette] not-Lorrie – healing part of anima to balance/counteract pistol) by boss/friend Josh (ego keeping Self on even keel) when janitor sez he tore up lab night before (disarray in computer-consciousness desire to trash records/memory/past à la body/car), she "not just" child psychiatrist (investigating gun-in-the-glove-box hidden violence in past to resolve guilt over boyhood oedipal impulses), in whose lab (emotional reiteration of James’s intellectual, her research interior to cf his astronomical; latter actually not-the-lab smokescreen for real, primal issue 2B analyzed) 13-yr-old Bobby (transitional Jas) trying to be like his father (Jas doing same sleeping w/ His wife) by not busting things up (as Jas accused in "other" lab: 1 lab lab for other), which Jas proceeds to do himself, triggering kid’s regression (watching from doorway/threshold, his freakout demo to self – viewed thru mediating window/screen – of issues left behind/unresolved at similarly transitional juncture [railroad crossing, again]).

Josh + James have blowup (self divided against itself now fault line drawn), Josh "trying to prove Benson’s wrong about you!" (evade recognition as unstable/immature; also, country facing own violent + avaricious past connected to pioneering spirit); busts in on Cort again (1st time concerning wmn [confronting CB w/ anima his negligence/ambition is suffocating], this time self [soon to confront own past, she conduit to occulted self-knowledge]), who produces file on James’s 3 weeks in sanitarium at 19 (CB’s subterfuge validated: he trickster devil forcing recognition of reality; "15" – actually 20 for Hunter – yrs ago post-Korea/WWII traumatic stress) for nervous breakdown (à la "stalled" car, Lorrie’s rescue as of feeling-self in path of unstoppable threat) CB describes as "moon eclipsing the sun" (cf own moonflight mission, Jas his unconscious "astronaut") + Jas explains brought on by "going to school – no $ – no family – no sleep" (before In the Beginning episode of rootless intellectual material dredged up + institutionalized – forgotten in unconsc – till appearing out of nowhere in prolog + climbing aboard new psychic vehicle; adrift w/o parents to play out oedipal maturation drama w/ + on whom to model own adult i.d., creates fantasy not-the-parents Cort+Lorrie).

Lorrie enters + stops James’s assault (anima subduing aggressive animus à la Larstedt/Bobby), Cort deciding "Maybe you + this crazy genius belong together" ("genius" as much intellectual spirit [which usually does carry archetypal connection to mother-muse] as Jas himself) but using child Julie (completing Josh + Jas trio: embattled soul as intellect + instinct at odds) as blackmail (Jas can’t maintain both innocence + experience) by threatening to tell her about mother’s affairs (child’s realization of mommy’s promiscuity – ie sexual interest in other than him); James hatches plot to get away w/ murder ("Maybe I am a madman": film machine to bear this out, another exercise in postwar + ongoing self-annihilation à la Incredible Shrinking Man, Last Man on Earth, blob movies, Amazing Transparent Man, Hollow Man, 6th Sense, American Beauty et al), segue to Josh + "If anybody can do it he can" (film’s tightly constructed transitions à la murder plan ["like military campaign"], keeping tenacious grip on own sanity + clinching "mechanical" feel akin to fate [cf, again, opening tracks]/necessity) on granting 30-day leave of absence (from rationality, psyche cut loose in order to achieve subconscious aims [time period à la lunar cycle]).

Schemes to plead guilty but fake insanity (as always, act is real: lucid dreaming, in which mind enters irrational dream-state to fulfill instinctual aims) + goes to hotel (temporary/transitional location à la railroad x-ing) where Benson receiving honors (exalted rational ego), traversing panel after panel (layers of consciousness; huzzahs to art dir Rbt Emmet Smith) to open fire as CB declares intention "to reach out into space + bring back – " (he own quarry, blueprinting killer’s "lunacy" – literally, "influenced by the moon" now "eclipsing" him – to enable own eradication); at psychatric evaluation, flirts w/ Larstedt (dad out of way, moves in on mom, Viveca Lindfors having 6 yrs on him + 10 on Lorrie/Anne Francis), who may be onto him (she deepest self-knowledge CB trying to reach by Jas-proxy, moon-faced serenity concerned w/ innerspace; late husband believed psychology way of bringing light to primeval jungle, he spiritual/metaphorical not-[ie real] CB similarly killed by vagrant analysand [Jas replaying archetypal drama, Old Self eternally extinguished by errant/unresolved psychic detritus, like sun/moon]), assuring "I’m very much on your side – I’m very much in tune w/ you" (part of self: the -annihilating part).

Sentenced to State Hospital (mind entering deeper, anarchic state of unconsciousness, "till sanity restored" – ie till waking), where he ticks off Strother Martin ("You’re faking too, aren’t you?") for not shaking hands (resisting/denying own insanity) + Richard Kiel ruins his pot (asylum Central Casting [cf actor-dir Conrad]/Hollywood for oddball char-actors in which similar thespian James gets mired on road to romance w/ muse), till, fraying, he insists on Lorrie visit (short on romance: wants her to get Larstedt on review board, he regressing from sexual not-the-mother [psychic device bridging mother-attraction to mature lover] to virginal [childless] mother herself: "looking back" portion of Orphic descent into underworld) to spring him just ahead of date (wake up before unconscious consumes ego + before project completed, intended program to mimic situation [mother/father romance], not participate in it); unhelpful Lorrie (moon for which James shooting going into New phase at tail end of cycle) didn’t think he’d actually go thru w/ plot in 1st place (purposelessness of endeavor; point again in the acting, not the act) + leaves for arms of another man ("not good at being alone….in that big, empty house" aka consciousness abandoned by Consciousness, exiting asylum à la domestic edifice [a similar loony bin], he her subliminal device to escape patriarchy on eve of Liberation 70s, film itself expiatory rite à la Roman lustrum + pagan sun/son sacrifice).

At "Larstedt’s" (not-L’s, he escaped material reaching [new] consciousness: return o/t son [she "Shining Moon" Jocasta to his crippled Oedipus, stay in hospital his journey into the diseased self – insanity at heart of America’s "pioneering" capitalist-imperialist spirit] she never had: regressive masculinity, or mythical masculine pwr in past [cf exalted late husband]), asks her to tell truth to Review Board (internal governing body aka superego) + tries to kiss her (manipulation, or genuine attraction – uncertain, à la "act" itself [filmmakers, having come to Hollywood insane-asylum for own motives, similarly entrenched + drawn twd different ideal than original]), thwarted by light behind mirror (à la Mr L’s light i/t jungle: awareness stirring in secreted rational consciousness behind own img, he now totally regressed to own boy-behind-pane of Bobby episode); tells him "We are the Review Board" (he seeking relative, subjective judgment all along, not objective scientific data: America entering self-"reflective" era) "+ whatever we decide you have to respect" (her accent suggesting international character of board aka United Nations: word up, George W) before he breaks glass (end of narcissistic dream, several men at center of psychic labyrinth cfg monolithic Cort Benson [venture past unity to multiplicity, begun at birth + replayed on maturation] fronting similar, financial board at head of picture) + bolts, declaring "I really loved you, too" (in addition + besides: country’s contradictory appetites, for both fecund amorality + Puritan restraint) + "I’m not insane" (which only lunatic believes; theatrical convention of mask becoming face) as guards (conscious "authorities") apprehend him on STATE HOSPITAL grounds (where entire film actually unravels, Caligari-like, sign à la 1st shot BENSON INDUSTRIES: studio/corporate America nuthouse, Jas’s murder of "wizard" [as Lorrie refers to him] at head own rational authority awa Oz figurehead aka God).

Dated, exciting, campy, reasonably intelligent+budgeted film deserves new attention; of same ilk as contemporary (+ likewise hysterical) Manchurian Candidate/Seconds + Lady in a Cage. (Ta, Bill + Denise)