![]() ![]() ![]() This first becomes apparent when the protagonist Doug Quaid is presented as not just working class but with the iconography of the key figure of socialist realist art, the noble worker whose idealism in body and mind is reflected by both Schwarzenegger’s own pursuit of a physical ideal and Quaid’s suspicion he is meant for something more. However, the layers of plot and reality hide something genuinely subversive: TOTAL RECALL is a Marxist allegory. The movie itself remains equivocal, rendering the clouds in Mars’ new blue skies the final image in a Rorschach test which ultimately has no thematic significance: this is not a philosophical treatise on the relative value of lived and imagined experience or questions of identity. The middle entry in Paul Verhoeven’s loose science fiction triptych is largely cast as the poor relation: without ROBOCOP’s ferocious skewering of consumer culture and corporate greed or STARSHIP TROOPERS’ deadpan parody of the insidious ascent of fascism, TOTAL RECALL’s lack of satirical bite is read as Verhoeven indulging the gung-ho escapism of Arnold Schwarzenegger in his prime, the film’s ambiguity between dream or reality being little more than a bow tying a cerebral accompaniment onto its visceral thrills. ![]()
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