AN ANALYSIS OF THE COMPLEX PLOT OF ′TOTAL RECALL′

Introduction 1
Summary of the story 2
Introducing Branigans scheme 3
Application of Branigan′s Narrative Scheme to ′Total Recall′ 5
Deviations to the classical narrative 7
The Point-Of-View and the Perceivers 9
Conclusion 10

Introduction

As the film Total Recall was released in 1990 critics were confused. In their attempts to give a summary they all created different stories. Some even figured out some failures in the plot and for some the story line was an enigma.¹
Though there was a lot of misunderstanding about this film there was also a 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) of the 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 in the Mad Max trilogy, ...), most envision the world that will emerge without such an apocalyptic break with history. The NBF scenario typically embraces urban expansion on a monstrous scale, where real estate capital has realised its fondest dreams of cancerous growth. (...). The heroes,..., go up against the corruption and power of the ruling corporations, which exercise a media-based velvet glove/iron fist social control."²
Exactly these characteristics can be found in ′Total Recall′. In consequence it could be read as a film that is following these patterns which are founded in the 1980′s Science Fiction. In this respect one could argue that ′Total Recall′ is a quite traditional movie. But ′Total Recall′ offers something new through using cyberspace. This world that is defined as virtual reality mixes all the patterns and norms of traditional SF and makes this film very special in its appearance.
As Paul Verhoeven says about his film: "For the audience every moment in the movie seems to be real. But when you get to the next scene, you can doubt the scene before, yeah? I′m exaggerating, because it would be really terrible to do that to an audience; everybody would be driven crazy, probably. But every once in a while you realise that what you saw before should have been seen in a different way, It was not reality, or it was a misinterpreted reality."³
The narrative structure of this film is therefore extremely complicated. It combines reality, dreams and virtual reality. Perceiving this film means having the choice between many narrations. They all depend on the point of view the perceiver wants to take. Therefore my task will be to show, how the narrative structure is established by using a so-called "classical" story line and a schizophrenic hero with many identities to mix everything up that is known as the "norm" of Hollywood cinema.

Summary of the story

At the beginning of ′Total Recall′s′ plot, a man and a woman dressed in space suits walk on the wasted landscape of planet Mars. The man (played by Arnold Schwarzenegger) falls down in a canyon. His helmet splits and he dies by suffocation. Frightened, construction worker Douglas Quaid (played by Schwarzenegger, too), wakes up out of this nightmare, that he had several times before. He experiences, stimulated by TV-news from Mars, an powerful longing to move to Mars. It is the year 2084. When his wife (Sharon Stone) refuses to go, he follows the advice of TV commercials and goes to a company, called Rekall, Inc. This firm is specialised in the implantation of vacation "implants" into its clients′ brains. But something goes wrong, and Quaid has a "schizoid embolism." The company dumps the unconscious Quaid into a taxi. Shortly after regaining consciousness he is attacked by four men. One of them is a colleague of him and calls him "Hauser" and tells him, that he has blown his cover. After killing these four men, he goes home, to find his wife attempting to kill him, too. She also tells him, that he is not Hauser but Quaid, a top security operative for Cohaagen (Ronny Cox), the evil capitalist ruler of the Earth′s mining colony on Mars. Hauser knew too much and became too powerful for Cohaagen. So Hauser′s memory was erased and he was send with a new identity to earth to lead a normal life as a worker.
Still on earth Quaid is followed by Cohaagens′ killers, who want to avoid that he goes to Mars and can meet Kuato. He can flee to a hotel, where he gets a phone call of a stranger, who brings him a suitcase. It contains some technical equipment and a computer. When he turns it on his own image appears on the screen and starts talking to him and recommends him to follow his instructions and go to Mars. Quaid / Hauser goes to Mars and meets Melina (Rachel Ticotin), the prostitute-revolutionary he had a love affair with and falls in love with her again. The political leader of the mutant worker rebels on Mars, Kuato, wants to come in contact with Quaid / Hauser because of his knowledge as a former friend of Coohagen. When Quaid′s wife also appears on Mars he kills her and joins the rebels, and inadvertently leads Cohaagen′s soldiers to Kuato, who is killed and Quaid / Hauser and Melina are captured. What Quaid / Hauser is not told is that Cohaagen has planned to send Hauser on earth in order to return incognito to Mars and gain the confidence of Kuato, and then to innocently lead Cohaagen′s forces to the rebel′s fortress. Since Kuato possess telepathic powers, there was no other way for Hauser to accomplish this except by completely giving up his original identity. But Quaid / Hauser and Melina can escape and find the ancient Martian technology for making air on the barren planet. After killing lots of bad guys, including Cohaagen, they set off the chain reaction that brings air to Mars.

Introducing Branigans scheme

For my proposal, that ′Total Recall′ can be read as a usual NBF-film, I have to demonstrate that it has the usual narrative structure of a classical Hollywood film. For this purpose I have chosen the model of Edward Branigan. He has developed a model that is applicable on the classical narratives and defines this specific method as a `Narrative Scheme′<sup>4</sup>.
First I want to introduce the model Branigan developed. In his book `Narrative Comprehension in Film′ from 1992 he introduces a method of classifying various parts of any narrative structure in accordance with its standard system. Branigan gives this definition : `A scheme is an arrangement of knowledge already possessed by a perceiver that is used to predict and classify new sensory data.′⁵ Branigan′s scheme is based on a literary model and is as follows:

Abstract.
Orientation and Exposition.
An Initiating Event.
A Goal.
A Complicating Action.
Climax and Resolution.
Epilogue.
Narration.

It has eight parts or areas of information. In order to understand the concept, Branigan gives an illustration. He uses the fairy tale `The Frog and the Princess′.
Branigan describes the ′abstract′ as `a title or compact summary of the situation which is to follow′⁶. Applied to the `Frog and the Princess′, the abstract would be the title itself, because it sets out the initial story world, that of the Princess and of the Frog, and leads us to believe that the story will revolve around their later interaction<sup>7</sup>. He further qualifies his idea of an abstract: `If an abstract is expanded, it becomes a Prologue.′⁸ Basically, if the abstract has great detail and is more than a compact summary about the life of the main characters, it becomes a Prologue. If for example there were information about the parentage of the Princess additionally to the fact that she is a Princess, then this would be a prologue because it has no real bearing on the story of the Princess and the Frog because it has nothing to do with their interaction directly⁹.
The ideas of orientation and exposition are fundamentally linked. They both provide information about the characters in the story that is going to take place. In Branigan′s words: ′The Orientation is `a description of the present state of affairs (place, time, character)′ and the Exposition gives `information about past events which bear on the present. To use the story as an example, the Orientation would become; `(Once upon a time). there was a beautiful young Princess who was very unhappy because she didn′t like any of the Princes that wanted to marry her, even though they visited her castle everyday and serenaded her below her window at night.′ This gives the following information. She lives in a castle (place); and she is a `beautiful young Princess′ which gives an idea of her age (time); and we get insight into her character because we know that she is unhappy.
The exposition in this case does not really exist. There is no historical information about the Princess or the place in which she lives and no retelling of past events. Because of the generic conventions of the Fairy tale the story is `timeless′ and has no detailed background.
Branigan defines the initiating event as something which `alters the present state of affairs.′¹⁰ In the story of the Frog and the Princess it would be the King telling the Princess that she must choose a Prince to marry within a week. Now the story starts. The state of equilibrium has be upset, the King wants something to happen that has not, which draws the focus in the narrative for the re-establishing of the equilibrium.
The goal as Branigan defines it is ′a statement of intention or an emotional response to an initiating event by a protagonist.′¹¹ In the story the goal would be the Princess choosing a Prince to marry, which would consequently mean that she would be happy and her father′s request would be satisfied.
The complicating action is usually linked to the antagonist in the story and as Branigan says it ′arises as a consequence of the initiating event and presents an obstacle to the attainment of the goal.′¹² For the purposes of the Princess′s story it would be the discovery that the Frog is in fact a Prince. The Princess wants to marry a handsome Prince but in order to do so she must kiss the ugly frog. That is, she must overcome an obstacle in order to achieve her goal.
The climax usually evolves around a battle between the ′hero′ and the ′villain′ and for Branigan this means an end to the ′conflict between goals and obstacles and establishes a new equilibrium or state of affairs.′ This new state of equilibrium is called resolution and as such it usually marks the end of the story. In the illustrating story the climax of the `conflict′ would be the Princess overcoming the ugliness of the Frog to kiss it and the resolution would be her new marriage to the handsome Prince.
′The epilogue is the moral lesson implicit in the history of these events and may include explicit character reactions to the resolution.′<sup>13</sup> For the reader of the `Frog and the Princess′ the moral of the story would be not to judge people, or things, by their appearance because appearances are deceptive. An explicit character reaction here would occur if the Princess said aloud that she will never judge people again just by appearances. In most stories it is usually quite a simple moral lesson to be learned.
Narration is a different idea to the rest of Branigan′s scheme and is not immediately quantifiable in terms of what happens in the story. It is rather implicit in the way that the story is written or told. Thus he writes: "The Narration is constantly at work seeking to justify implicitly or explicitly (1) Why the narrator is competent and credible in arranging and reporting these events and (2) Why the events are unusual, strange or worthy of attention. In other words, how is it possible to possess the knowledge and why should it be possessed."¹⁴ A simple way to break down these two distinctions would be to give them more revealing names like depth and range of narration.
The depth of narration refers to the level at which the person telling the story has access to the story information itself. If for example a story was told from the point of view of the main character in the story, a first person ′I′, then the depth of narration would be great because they should have access to all of the information relevant. If the story was told from a third party ′He′, then the depth would not be so great because they may not have access to all of the relevant information, or see it from the Hero′s point of view. These points shape the readers believe in the credibility of the storyteller.
The range of narration stresses the importance of the storyteller. If for example all of the story information is given through one person then the range is restricted. A counter-example would be if the story information is given through more than one character. If there is a God like person who gives the information then the range is omniscient.
There are several other notable things about this scheme and perhaps the most important idea is that it can be applied to a macro as well as to a micro level. Film possesses coherence from the level of shot to the whole of the film itself. As Branigan writes: `Narrative is a recursive organisation of data; that is, it′s components may be embedded successively at various micro and macro levels of action.′¹⁵ The path from the Initiating event, which is not necessarily the first thing in the narrative, to the Resolution and Exposition is not linear. Parts can be repeated several times and some may not be included at all.
Another important point to be made not necessarily about the scheme but about narratives in general is that they almost always rely on a ′snowball effect′ for coherence. That is to say, events which have happened earlier on in the story normally always have relevance, and indeed may decide the outcome, to later events. If for example in the ′Frog and the Princess′ we learn that the Princess must marry a Prince within a week then we can understand her actions in overcoming the ugliness of the Frog to kiss it. The previous events in the narrative give us a motivation for the Princess doing what she does. In this manner it can be argued that early events in the story form an exposition to the later parts of the story, they become ′information about past events which bear on the present.′ These are the most important signs of a classical narrative.

Application of Branigan′s Narrative Scheme to ′Total Recall′
′Total Recall′ can be read as a film with a ′classical′ narrative scheme. The abstract would be the title of the film: ′Total Recall′, because there is no compact summary of the situation that is to follow and the title itself defines the issue of this film very well. Included in the abstract is a prologue. Two people in space suits walking on a wasted red shining landscape. Time and location are not named and so the perceivers have to guess and have to ask the first questions. Who is it? Where is it? What is going on? The two spacemen look at each other and for a short moment the faces can be recognised. It is therefore the introduction of some characters. When one of these people is falling down a slope, smashes its helmet and can not breath it is the introduction of an adventure line and also the hint for the perceivers that this happens on a planet, where is no air to breath.

When Quaid wakes up out of a nightmare he tells his wife that he dreamed about Mars again. Now we know that the abstract must have been his nightmare. Then he watches the news of the world which includes Earth and Mars, which is a colony where an important metal comes from. Then he tells his wife that he wants to move to Mars with her, but she does not want it and tells him to stop dreaming about it. But he says he knows that he can do more than to be an ordinary worker. This part is the orientation. It gives information about the place (earth), time (somewhere in the future) and the characters (Quaid and his wife). It is also the end of the adventure line of the prologue. In the following film nothing is linked directly to the adventure line of the prologue.
Quaid can not stop thinking about Mars and goes to a corporation which offers dream implants, that take people on trips to places where they always wanted to go, but will never come in their real life. The implantation at this corporation becomes a disaster and Quaid has to go through a schizoid embolism. This can be determined as the initiating event and as the beginning of the adventure line. After his visit at the Rekall corporation Quaid has to recognise that the world around him has changed completely. His former friend and workmate wants to kill him and his wife appears to be a killer. On the other hand he experiences that he has also changed. He is educated to fight and kill and obviously he is more than a worker. But he has to flee, because a pack of killers wants to kill him. A stranger gives Quaid a suitcase, which contains a computer. On the computer screen appears Quaid′s image and tells him, that he is not Quaid and not a worker at all. He should go to Mars and he will see, that he is needed there, because he is the only one who can help the people there. The task he has to fulfil remains unknown. Quaid believes it and moves to Mars. This might be the goal of the film: The fulfilment of a unknown task. When he arrives on Mars he has to experience, that he is called Hauser and has been here some time before. When he meets a prostitute that used to be his girlfriend on Mars (start of the love line, formation of the couple) she tells him about his past on Mars he can not remember and that he is the key to something very important (complicating action), which is not defined yet. By this the person Quaid / Hauser gets a motivation, namely to solve an enigma on Mars and also a background information about the past of Hauser he has been before he visited Rekall corporation. The story becomes more complicated, too, because the perceiver can recognise the prostitute as the woman in the space suit of the first scene (prologue). Together they fight against the evil Cohaagen (formation of the couple) and in the end they can free Mars and start a reactor which produces air and Mars gets its atmosphere. The inhabitants of Mars are rescued (climax and resolution). The epilogue is just a short question of Quaid / Hauser (I had a terrible thought: What is, if this is a dream?) and an answer by Melina (Then kiss me quick, before you wake up!).
In consequence it can be said, that ′Total Recall′ is completely applicable to the Branigan scheme. At any time its structure encourages the spectator to construct a coherent, consistent time and space of all narrative events. Something that remains for the time uncertain becomes vivid by the use of the ′snowball effect′. This narrative principle is used several times. I want to highlight at least two. After Quaid gets a suitcase with a computer and other devices inside, he is told by his own recorded character appearing on the computer screen, that he is actually somebody else, namely a secret agent. He should take care of the bad guys of Cohaagen and go to Mars. This explains why he as an ordinary worker was able to kill four him attacking men and why he has to flee the killers. It also explains that he must been on Mars before. The second time is very similar to the previous scene. Again the Quaid / Hauser-character appears on a screen on the office of the evil Cohaagen. Quaid / Hauser is told by his own character that he was just used as a tool to lead Cohaagen to the head of the resistant group on Mars, called Kuato. His own character tells him that he just ′borrowed′ his body to Quaid the worker and now wants it back. On this point of the story we know now the reason, why Hauser had to be transformed to the Quaid-character. Finally it becomes clear, when Quaid listens to his alter ego on the screen, that Quaid is the good part and Hauser the bad part of the Quaid / Hauser character.

What the narrative of ′Total Recall′ offers is a structure that provides connectives in the form of causal relations, sequentiality, and most importantly the satisfaction of an ending, a final "steady state" through which all other elements will retroactively assume a full significance. This structure can be called the master-narrative. Such a master-narrative needs also an ending of all story lines. Here the ending is a happy-end. The love story: Quaid / Hauser and Melina become in the end a couple (formation of the couple) and they can rescue Mars, which is also the fulfilment of the Quaid / Hauser task (end of adventure line). In consequence ′Total Recall′ could be seen as a film in the tradition of the classical Hollywood cinema. As Bordwell writes: `The relatively close correspondence between story order and narrational order in the classical film helps the spectator create an organised succession of hypotheses and a secure rhythm of question and answer.′¹⁶ On the other hand there are some deviations, which do not mix up the classical narrational order but put the spectators in a state of unawareness of the ongoing story line.

Deviations to the classical narrative

The seemingly ′normal′ manner of story telling in ′Total Recall′ can also be interpretated in a different way. The common manner would be, that the narrative is immediately comprehensible to the viewer. This actually happens in ′Total Recall′ as has been shown by the previous analysis of it′s `internal order′ of the narrative. In this film the deviations are achieved in following way: The usual narrative construction is always questioned. The spectators can not be sure, whether it is ′real′ what is happening on screen or not. They are always in search of one story line that can be taken as the one and only ′real′ story. There are two methods to create this atmosphere.
The first method the film uses is to get the viewer to look at the film without the normal `customary perception′ of an obvious ′reality′ that they are used to. This causes them to question everything they see for its relevance to what they perceive as the story which is something that the Hollywood film normally is to avoid. Primarily it offers many levels of reality and it constantly asks the moviegoers in which ′reality′ of the story they are right now. This is achieved because the main character is obviously schizophrenic. ′The central characteristic of the Quaid / Hauser-character involves his crises of subjectivity. His crises begins when the categories of the real and the rational begin to dissolve his boundaries. In fact it is not a failure of the hero-character but interwoven with the changes in the physical world namely the expansion of the technologies of reproduction.′¹⁷ The technology the ′Rekall corporation′ offers is the production of interactive dreams the client can control. By entering this virtual world Quaid becomes schizophrenic. The Quaid / Hauser character still existing in the proper world seems to control his ′dream′ in a realistic way at the same time. His ′dreams′ seem to be reproduced artificially in his mind through an implantation. They will remain as a recall in his memory.
It stays unclear to the end of the film, who is regarded as the hero of the story. Is it the story world of Quaid′s implanted dream we were allowed to enter or is it Hauser who turned to Quaid and experiences a real adventure? It is quite clear that the narrative scheme is being obstructed by the co-existence of two characters in one person (Quaid / Hauser) here. Usually the perceivers link to one character only one personal ′life′ with all its background information. This information includes the appearance, the motivation, the profession, intelligence and everything else the perceivers are interested in. Of main interest is the hero\ine of the story. The perceivers will orientate on this person, because they can rely that this character will appear most of the time in the story. Additionally they also can become familiar with this character. The character Quaid becomes ′schizophrenic′ and gets a second personality called Hauser who appears as somebody completely different, so the audience find difficulties to create proper questions and answers they need to understand this character. In consequence the spectators get confused. They loose orientation and the link to the hero of the story more easily.
A second deviation of the film is its ambiguity. When viewed the whole of the narrative it seems like all events can be followed easily, but in fact it is difficult to work out what is ′real′ in each part of the film. I want to mention at least one example. When Quaid / Hauser stays in the Hilton hotel on Mars he is visited by a psychiatrist who wants to convince him that he had a schizoid embolie and his dream is now out of control. Then his wife enters the room and together with the psychiatrist she wants him to swallow a pill that supposingly brings him back to reality. Shortly before he swallows the pill he notes a drop of sweat on the psychiatrists forehead and shoots him exactly there. This short sequence brings the perceivers very close to the question of reality. Is it really just a dream or is this pill a poison that should kill Quaid? The level of reality and artificial dream come very close and the hero has to answer this question. He decides on the reality and kills the dream level. Similar sequences to this are coming and the same question appears again. It can be seen that it is just a ′normal′ part of the film and is nor in contradiction to the story line nor to the narrational order. This question is steadily asked right to the end of the film, where it is thought by the hero himself. After Quaid / Hauser and Melina have rescued Mars they stay on a marsian landscape and the Happy End is near, Quaid / Hauser just has a terrible thought: "What is it if anything is just a dream", he asks. This is the invitation for the perceivers to think about the whole story again. Again the reality of the story is questioned and now definitely the perceivers are asked to make there mind up. Some can even take this as a typical ending in classical film but some may start to rethink the whole story and try to find their own reading of the film.

The Point-Of-View and the Perceivers

The reading of the film becomes difficult, if the perceivers follow the invitation to question the level of reality of the film. It has to be said that the film does not question the reality of the perceivers but its own levels of reality. I mentioned the methods how this is achieved before. Now I want to explain how the perceivers have an active role while watching this film.
What exactly makes this film special is the introduction of Cyberspace. Cyberspace is defined as the construction of an artificial world in a computer. Such an artificial world can be build by computer programmes and they can be influenced and controlled by people who want to communicate with them. They are e.g. necessary for scientists who want to create and examine some problems they can not watch in the real world. One of the future targets of the people who use Cyberspace is the direct connection of their brain to such an artificial world. So Cyberspace could be controlled by thoughts ( instead of using a joy-stick, keyboard, or glove or other mechanical devices). It would be visualised in the brain, so a screen as it is used nowadays to visualise computer actions would not be necessary anymore.¹⁸
In the film ′Total Recall′ this becomes true. Quaid gets an implantation into his body, which makes him entering this Cyberspace. This implantation does not makes him dreaming, because a dream can not be controlled like he can do it in this film. For example, he is asked for his preferences, which becomes programmed in the implantation. All his wishes will exactly appear later on in his ′industrial made dream′.
The Cyberspace is another space in the whole film and this is what it makes special. Usually there is only one narrational space. In ′Total Recall′ there are three and the perceiver does not know in which space it plays. The confusion starts shortly before the implantation. What is it, what happens? Is it real? There are some possibilities how to read the film. All these possibilities are linked to the visit at the ′Rekall corporation′. Three are listed here:

· The main character has a schizoid embolism before the implantation of the memories, so the rest of the story after his awakening out of the embolie is real on the level of the master narrative. Schizoid embolism - Reality
· A second interpretation could follow the line that the main character has a schizoid embolism before the implantation and dreams the following. Schizoid embolism - Dream
· A third possibility would be that it is the implantation that makes him dreaming that he has a schizoid embolie exactly at the place where he is, namely the Rekall Corporation. Implantation - Dream

The visit at the Rekall corporation is the key point of the whole story. From now on the perceivers are driven to take a specific point-of-view to the whole story. There are many possibilities to read the film, but they have to make a choice, how they want to read it. From this point on nothing is real and nothing is unreal. Perceivers who follow the usual narrational order will take everything that is shown on the screen as granted. Their reading of the film would mean that the worker Quaid goes to the Rekall corporation and has an schizoid embolie after an injection but before the implant was given to him. The whole implantation is cancelled by the corporation and he is put into a taxi. Then he has to experience, that he is another person called Hauser and has been a secret agent of the evil Cohaagen, who wants to kill him now. He goes to Mars and rescues it.
The second possibility would be that the main character has a schizoid embolism before the implantation and dreams the story that follows. It is not complicated to imagine that a person who has nightmares that play on Mars can also have a dream that takes him as a secret agent with a double identity to an adventure trip on Mars with another woman who wants to live there.
The third possibility is the product of the implantation. Everything that is shown after he has taken place in the chair at the Rekall corporation is the memory made by the implant. The schizoid embolism is just used as a verification to switch in the identity of a secret agent, so that the story line of the clients ′ personality is not interrupted and the artificial memories can be put to the already existing memories without problems.
All these possibilities depend on the point-of-view of the perceivers. In its history the term point-of-view had many meanings. Nowadays it always needs a second term additional to point-of-view to make clear which meaning is intended to say. In his 1984 work ′The point of view in the Cinema′, Branigan points out the vast range of functions covered by this term.
′Point of View in the Cinema′ argues forcefully for the subjective ingredient in all point-of-view structures, including the subjectivity of author, narrator, character and perceiver. Branigan′s imbrication of point-of-view and subjectivity evokes perception, psychology and ideology, but the specific thrust of the argument is to locate the spectator as the fundamental organising agency, the subject who makes use of the restrictions, the cues and the shifts among the various levels of narrative form to make sense of the fictional world In the context of narrative theory, the most provocative aspect of Branigan′s text is in his implicit argument that the category of point-of-view is the most significant aspect of narrative structure. Point-of-view, in this treatment, links the discourse, or the textual mechanisms of shot/reverse shot, eyeline matches, camera movements, etc., to the story-world - the world of events, characters, fictional space and time. This linkage, in turn, provides a privileged set of highly significant cues to the spectator, producing an especially rich set of textual indicators: "I consider point-of-view to be a textual system which controls (expands, restricts. changes) the viewer′s access to meaning... . Point of view basically answers the question: what work (by whom) has transformed matter into meaning?′′¹⁹.
Applied to ′Total Recall′ it can be said that subjectivity of the perceiver organises and controls the whole film. The perceivers have to choose their individual point-of-view they want to take. The film itself can not control it and does not want to control it. In contrary ′Total Recall′ offers many possibilities to the perceivers to make their mind up about their point-of-view in respect to the narration of the film. Therefore the reading of the film depends only on the perceiver.

Conclusion

What does all this tell us about the film ′Total Recall′? First of all, it gives us an insight into the structure of the film and from this we can understand what it is trying to achieve. It has already been noted, that the film adheres strictly to Branigan′s narrative scheme on the level of the traditional narration of Hollywood Cinema. Virtually all sections of it can be identified throughout any given sequence of the film. This is useful in our understanding of the film because it means that we can easily follow the sequence of events that are taking place on the screen. Following the usual line of the film it can be said, that it is a dream of a construction worker of the lower class of the year 2084, who highly influenced by the media and commercials wishes a better life. His capital does not allow him to go on vacation on Mars. So he uses the Rekall Inc., that makes him dreaming of his ′desired life′. He falls in love, rescues a world and becomes a hero. His wishes have come true.
Because of the very different spaces it is hence more difficult to follow. The question of realism is fundamental to the film and how it is achieved forms the basis of it′s structure. Realism in the case of ′Total Recall′ is created by the use of a kind of narration that can be found in Classical Hollywood films. ′The survey of these well known narrational modes can properly start with this classical tradition, since it relies on the strongest schemata and the most prevalent extrinsic norms. In fact by these schemata the perceivers can intuitively recognise an ordinary, easily comprehensible movie′,²⁰ what makes ′Total Recall′ very familiar.
Secondly it doesn′t give any clear background information to the characters in order to get the viewer to construct their own view of the characters. In contrary, the identity of the main character Quaid changes the whole film. Firstly, when we think that we know the main character Quaid, the earthly construction worker, he suddenly becomes a killer. Then he is a close friend of the evil Cohaagen and after killing his wife he becomes the lover of a prostitute on planet Mars. This is again a deviation from the `established norms′ of representation that the audience would be accustomed to. It could therefore be argued that the film tries to be something very different from the NBF as it appears to be.
The Russian Formalist school of thought argued that in order to achieve realism in any medium there must be some sort of change made to its method of representation. That is, in order for anything to be `realistic′ the conventions in which it is normally expressed must be subtly altered so as to force the audience into looking at the subject from a new and different angle. This process was called `Defamiliarisation′ or `Ostrenanie′ by it′s first advocator, Victor Shklovsky.²¹ `Defamiliarization′s purpose was to shock spectators into awareness by subverting routinised perception, by making forms difficult, and by exploding the encrustation of customary perception. Defamiliarization was to be achieved by the use of formal devices based upon deviations from the established norms of style.′ Verhoeven as the director of this film uses this principle to bring the perceivers in a position of more freedom. Normally it is argued that a Hollywood film can be read only in one way, because it forces the perceivers to take one specific point-of-view on the film. In contrary ′Total Recall′ offers many point-of-views and it is up to the perceivers to choose their personal one. This brings individuality to this film. Therefore ′Total Recall′ is different to other mainstream films. But it still uses the principles of the narartive of Classical Hollywood Cinema. It is just a variation of latter one.
Seen in this way this film appears as a critic of its own genre. Will our dreams be influenced by the media in this way in the future? Will the narrative style of the Hollywood film even have affected our sense of storytelling and dominate the world of memories, that can be controlled by corporations which implant the dreams we want? This is something that should make us very anxious of the American film and its domination of the world film market. Will there be a time where the film not only fulfils our expectations and desires but also controls our memories? This exactly is, what this film shows; the way, how Hollywood works. A usual storyline can be adapted to something new that is still based on the old principles. This gives a view on the future of Hollywood and its influence on the world of film and its capability always to remain very successful by adapting new features.
What can be said in the end is: You are not you, a film is not only a film and a hero is not a hero and reality is not shown in a film but Hollywood will still remain the same.

1 Nico de Klerk: SF&barkrukken in Skrien , p.26 `Waarom hij, nu woonachtig op Aarde, dan toch naar Mars terug wil is mij een raadsel.´

2 Fred Glass: Totally Recalling Arnold. p.2 in Film Quarterly Fall 1990

3 On Dangerous Ground, in: Film Comment, July-August 1990. p. 26

4 Edward Branigan: Narrative Comprehension in Film, London Routledge 1992, Preface p.xii

5 Edward Branigan: Narrative Comprehension in Film, London Routledge 1992, p. 13

6 Edward Branigan: Narrative Comprehension in Film, London Routledge 1992, p. 18

7 Edward Branigan: Narrative Comprehension in Film, London Routledge 1992, p. 19

8 Edward Branigan: Narrative Comprehension in Film, London Routledge 1992, p. 18

9 Edward Branigan: Narrative Comprehension in Film, London Routledge 1992, p. 19

10 Ibidem, p.18

11 Ibidem, p. 18

12 Ibidem, p. 18

13 Ibidem, p. 18

14 Ibidem, p. 18

15 Edward Branigan: Narrative Comprehension in Film, London Routledge 1992, p. 18

16 David Bordwell: The Classical Hollywood Cinema. p. 44

17 Scott Bukatman: Terminal Identity - The virtual subject in Modern Science Fiction. pp 48-49

18 Clock DVA: In einer CD-Single.nachschauen.

19 Robert Stam: New Vocabularies in Film Semiotics. pp.86-87

20 David Bordwell: The Classical Hollywood Cinema. p.156

21 Robert Stam: New Vocabularies in Film Semiotics. p.10