If you like movies with paranormal and supernatural elements, you might want to check out Dead Again, a classic movie starring Kenneth Branagh, Emma Thompson and Andy Garcia. Released in 1991, the movie explores the concepts of past lives before that topic was given much attention in Hollywood or mainstream media.
The story starts off with a woman called “Grace” who is suffering from amnesia. Grace can’t speak and has no idea who she is. However, she is suffering from terrifying nightmares in which someone is trying to kill her. A detective named Mike Church who specializes in finding missing persons takes on the case. His goal is to figure out who Grace is so that she can go back to her normal life.
A hypnotist volunteers to help by performing hypnosis on Grace, and when he does, it turns out that Grace has memories of a past life. She describes the marital life of a pianist named Margaret and her husband Roman, who is composer. As Grace remembers more about this couple’s union, she realizes that Margaret was murdered and Roman was executed for the crime.
The movie deals with the cynicism that some have about past lives and reincarnation. For example, the detective, Mike Church, is not a believer — until he is hypnotized and realizes that he was also a part of that past life that Grace remembers.
There are many past life themes that are explored in the movie.
For example, it points out that souls often reincarnate together in multiple lifetimes. Someone could be your parent in this lifetime, a child in another lifetime and a spouse in yet another lifetime.
It points to the fact that karma can carry over from lifetime to lifetime. If you hurt someone in another lifetime, you will have to balance the scale even if it doesn’t happen until another life.
The movie also explores the fact that past life traumas can continue to haunt us through nightmares, visions and even our current fears. Many phobias that don’t make sense in our current life would be quite understandable if we knew the circumstances of a past life. For example, a fear of fire in a current life could be a result of being burned to death in a previous one.
The movie is suspenseful and has quite a few unexpected twists and turns. It also shows that life’s synchronicities are not mere coincidences, but rather part of the mysterious and miraculous connection that we all share.
