Total Recall is, somehow, even better than I remembered it. I would argue against the idea that the death of the psychologist marks the film's turning point, and at that time Arnold is now trapped inside Rekall and the rest of the film is his paranoid/fantastical delusion dream world. It is very nearly plausible, except the film is not strictly told from his point of view. If we are operating on the assumption that everything is implanted memories then it doesn't really make sense for him to remember things he was not there for. But more than this, I think this argument is somewhat irrelevant. Whether what we're seeing is "really happening" or "all part of a dream' within the context of a film in which none of it actually happened seems a little like an exercise in missing the point. Maybe it makes more sense in a movie that takes its narrative more seriously, but as far as I'm concerned Verhoeven is using everything in the movie metaphorically, so that there is never any need for us to put it together or make sense of it in a real-world context.
Instead we should look at it from the obvious set-up of a movie that embodies the format of an escapist sci-fi action film for the express purpose of pointing out how silly escapist action films are. In doing so it captures much of the duality inherent in this exercise, alternating seductive glimpses of power fantasy and then attacks that seduction with a series of layer-peeling reveals that expose the fantasy for what it is. The film opens with a dream that segues into sexy pillow banter between Arnold Schwarzenegger, the '80s paragon of manliness, and Sharon Stone, the coy yet caring and devoted blonde wife, and culminating in an unseen sex scene with Stone saying, "I'll give you something to dream about." Later Arnold visits Rekall and is asked to supply attractive attributes for his ideal woman. He picks a woman more or less like the wife he already has, only brunette instead of blonde -- perhaps a winking nod to the cliche about the grass being greener, as his ideal woman is different only on a superficial level. By the end of the movie he has traded one girl for the other under the pretense that one's love is real, and the other's is a manipulation. Yet we never know any more about the brunette than her original qualities, while Stone has much more depth and far more closely resembles a real person. An early breakfast argument between her and Schwarzenegger feels like a stage-y movie marital disagreement, yet is plausibly grounded compared to the melodramatic slapping and life-and-death of his interactions with Rachel Ticotin. The point I guess is that everything is a little bit fake, so it doesn't really matter whether some of it is Really Fake and some is only Kinda Fake.
More jokes abound involving the idea of tourism and vacation as an inconvenient hassle and that, if given the chance, most people would probably rather remember a good vacation than risk taking a real bad one. This also raises ideas about the nature of memory, as well as our tendency to gloss over negative experiences when it comes to visits to other places. There is an expectation that we will have a good time and so that's what we convince ourselves. That's not exactly revelatory or anything, but the jokes are cleverly spiked in and the movie wouldn't have quite the same punch without them.
Finally, the movie treads similar ground to Robocop (although, I'd say, more successfully), in its anti-'80s indictment of privatization and the idea that it can only lead to exploitation. It also goes down a hilarious rabbit hole of paranoia and distrust, finally ending with the joke that Schwarzenegger cannot even trust himself. As punctuation to an era of vastly shifting political alliances and some of the more heated Cold War panicks, with Reagan introducing all kinds of new ways for America to be jingoistic and xenophobic, it's a pretty fantastic final touch.
No comments:
Post a Comment