Total Recall-totally hilarious

Although I could not make sense of the Rheingold reading, I did find some interesting things to observe about Total Recall, a movie which wasn’t as heinous as I imagined it would be. Actually, it was somewhat amusing.

I was struck by the use of technology in the beginning of the film to achieve the soothing and picaresque. Instead of living my a lake, Sharon Stone and Arnold Schwarzenegger can just hit a button and all of a sudden they are breakfasting in view of a lovely, natural lake setting. While in many of the films we’ve viewed so far technology is viewed as ethically questionable, this use seemed rather pleasant.

The use of technology becomes unsettling when Quaid goes to visit the Recall Memory Services. They promise a “perfect” vacation with their memory implant, telling Quaid that he can avoid all the pitfalls and inconveniences of a real-life vacation. My question is, though, why would you want to miss those inconveniences? No human experience is completely perfect and one of the best nights of my life was the night I got lost walking around Venice.

I notice this movie, despite its age, encapsulates some fairly universal themes, namely the struggle for power. There were two scenes I thought were interesting for this reason. The first is when Quaid gets to the station on Mars and there is a sudden attack by insurgents. This reminded me a great deal of the situation and instability in Iraq. The scene is in Cohagen’s office, when the camera pans in on the goldfish. He, the master, drops some food in their bowl and they come running (or swimming rather), completely under his control.

The other thing I was intrigued by was the struggle to tell the real from the unreal. I felt this was enforced in the movie through lighting, sound, and in vast, industrial looking scenery.