An Analysis of the complex plot of "Total Recall"

Dirk Schmelz

• Publisher: GRIN Verlag
• Year: 2003
• eBook ISBN: 9783640060627
• Edition: 0
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Film & Video

Seminar paper from the year 1994 in the subject Film Science, grade: B/A, University of Amsterdam, language: English, abstract: As the film Total Recall was released in 1990 critics were confused. In theirattempts to give a summary they all created different stories. Some even figuredout some failures in the plot and for some the story line was an enigma.1Though there was a lot of misunderstanding about this film there was alsoa consens on the kind of genre the film belonged to. Fred Glass gave in his article'Totally recalling Arnold' the film 'Total Recall' the label NBF "New Bad Future", which has to be understood as a subgenre of the fertile SF (Science Fiction) ofthe 1980's. NBF is defined as following: "NBF films tell stories about a future in the grip of feverish social decay. While some posit a post nuclear barbarism (as inthe Mad Max trilogy, ...), most envision the world that will emerge without such anapocalyptic break with history. The NBF scenario typically embraces urbanexpansion on a monstrous scale, where real estate capital has realised its fondestdreams of cancerous growth. (...). The heroes,..., go up against the corruption andpower of the ruling corporations, which exercise a media-based velvet glove/ironfist social control."2Exactly these characteristics can be found in 'Total Recall'. In consequenceit could be read as a film that is following these patterns which are founded in the1980's Science Fiction. In this respect one could argue that 'Total Recall' is aquite traditional movie. But 'Total Recall' offers something new through usingcyberspace. This world that is defined as virtual reality mixes all the patterns andnorms of traditional SF and makes this film very special in its appearance.As Paul Verhoeven says about his film: "For the audience every moment inthe movie seems to be real. But when you get to the next scene, you can doubtthe scene before, yeah? I'm exaggerating, because it would be really terrible to dothat to an audience; everybody would be driven crazy, probably. But every once ina while you realise that what you saw before should have been seen in a differentway, It was not reality, or it was a misinterpreted reality."3The narrative structure of this film is therefore extremely complicated. Itcombines reality, dreams and virtual reality. Perceiving this film means having thechoice between many narrations. They all depend on the point of view theperceiver wants to take. [...]