Total Recall

As I said in my previous post, I am not a fan of action movies. (Though upon further reflection, Blade Runner wasn't really an action movie.) However, Total Recall is an example of the kind I like - it was funny (I can't really tell if it was supposed to be or not) and it wasn't trying to make a film out of a movie. It accepted what it was, an entertaining couple of hours with lots of guns and pretty people.

Again, though, I've gotten off track. Since I've been thinking a lot about my midterm paper, I'm interested in the way the narrative elements blurred the edges of reality in this movie. Since I'm in a fiction-writing program, the term that comes to mind is "unreliable narrator." Though there was not a narrator per se, there was the fact that the audience never knew what was going on. (Not even a little bit.) Unreliable narrators, as I've observed, are sometimes a weakness of a piece, but when there is a reason for their presence they can be absolutely pivotal to the plot. In this case, it was the latter. Not knowing what was going on allowed me to see that Quaid did not know what was going on.

This film also broaches the subject of what it means to have an identity. (Still thinking of my midterm project.) When Quaid went to Recall, they sold him memories, allowing him to be himself in a different world, but they upped the stakes when they sold him another identity. If the rest of the plot took place in the Recall experience, Quaid's memories and new identity as a secret agent became part of the same package, but both functioned as extensions of himself. In Blade Runner, Rachael's memories convinced her that she was a person. The same is true of Quaid. If he was Howser, he was still convinced that he was Quaid. If he wasn't Howser, the manipulation of his identity to believe he might be proves how blurry his reality actually was.

Maybe I was wrong - maybe this is a film after all.