We Can Remember This Film For You Wholesale (Total Recall (1990))

From http://www.emanuellevy.com/media/2012/07/total_recall_1990_poster.jpg

Dir. Paul Verhoeven

I was a fan of Paul Verhoeven already, but viewing a large chunk of his earlier, Dutch language now has had a direct effect on viewing his entire career. It explains a lot about his filmography, even explaining Showgirls (1995), when you realise he can be both completely serious and play in levels of parody that pushes boundaries. It also makes me wonder how Verhoeven was even able to get away with becoming a Hollywood director that was prolific as he was, the time when hard R rated films were still acceptable in the mainstream allowing him to go through with some extremely adult work like Total Recall. Soldier of Orange (1977) and its award success had to be the calling card for Hollywood's attention, and his films' visual look, guided by the cinematography of future director of his own Jan De Bont, are rich and would grab anyone. But Verhoeven's frankness, even if it was softened, with less full frontal male nudity and bluntness in sexuality and characterisation, was still provocative and controversial, able to meld it with a satirical edge to almost all his blockbusters. Even in his debut Business Is Business (1971), a comedy drama based on the true recollections of female, red light district prostitutes, shows an irrelevance matched to the serious, willing to show serious subject matter in such blackly humoured way, that still bled through to all his films up to Black Book (2006), his return to Dutch cinema. The grabbing of a second hand box set of his Dutch work, that costs an arm and a leg online, for a cheap price in a store,  a diamond of a find anyone would love to find, pushed me to explore and reconsider his whole canon. His filmography is almost all available bar the obscure TV movies and Tricked (2012), a return to filmmaking that was partially created with the assistance of the public. An upcoming film has been added to his IMDB list, and there has been talk of him getting a film about Jesus Christ green lit, whose provocative titbits from what I have heard would make it difficult to be made in this day and age. If Abel Ferrera may be finally able to make a film on Pier Paolo Passolini though, anything can happen.

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With Total Recall, you realise, with the new things I learn about Verhoeven's cinema, that Arnold Schwarzenegger films could be used as a meta-reflection on what a person's mind could generate. Ordinary man Douglas Quiad (Schwarzenegger), in the near future, goes for a mental vacation, where fictional memories of a vacation, even from yourself, can be embedded into your mind. From the moment he goes for the memory implant, one of two versions of the film can be taking place. The official view of the film is that Quaid finds out he is a real spy whose has been given amnesia to hide the secrets he knows about a conspiracy taking place at the colony at Mars, persuaded by the men of Mars' political leader Vilos Cohaagen (Ronny Cox), with his right hand man Richter (Michael Ironside) directly behind him. The other version of the film is that, in this conspiracy spy narrative, this plot is entirely the implant memory and is all taking place in Quaid's mind to the end of the movie. The one issue with the later idea is that we see scenes without Quiad in them, with Richer, Cohaagen and Lori (Sharon Stone), Quiad's wife. Bear in mind though is that this is if you view memories from within the idea that it should be first person. Can someone have memories that are third person even about themselves, especially faked ones? (And what does that say about the concept of cinema, a dreamlike construct that allows people to view themselves in third person too?). There's also the less philosophical issue that the official narrative as well as being continually questioned, as asked in the film itself, is incredibly convoluted and close to contrived. It could be that the script of Total Recall is weaker than others Verhoeven had, but with flaws and virtues with each interpretation that balances them together, the film dangles in a great centre where reality is completely subjective. It evokes Verhoeven's last Dutch film before going to Hollywood, The 4th Man (1983), which did the same balancing act in two different versions of what was happening but never choosing one over the other on purpose.

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It also allows this film to have its cake and eat it by allowing the moment it turns into a traditional "Arnie" movie, including the one-liners, to become a fantasy for Schwarzenegger's character himself. The film has something off about it when it gets to Arnie shooting people, blackly humorous but also perverted. It is incredibly violent, to the point it could repulse some but has an off-centre sense of sick but reflective humour to it, the middle chapter of a trilogy where the first, RoboCop (1987), had its violence noticeably censored, this film, and Starship Troopers (1997) where even the deaths of giant, alien insects caused one to look back at the stupidly violent carnage with a grim tongue in its cheek. The problem with his career is that Verhoeven's moments of black satire are taken seriously, when it fact they intermingle with the serious, upfront aspects in a way that is never ironic and never dampens the straight-faced aspects. Viewing Total Recall and his films again, even in his serious work there's a sense of perverse playfulness running through them from the beginning of his career, amplified and allowed to run amok when he got to make blockbusters when most non-American directors would have usually been straight jacketed. It's a very twisted sense of humour with this film, but it comes with a more honest view of its material, the potentially ill-advised mixing of revelling with the content, and stepping back and questioning it without philosophical digressions, working perfectly.

From http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/02065/1990-total-recall_2065421i.jpg

It's very much a stereotypical Schwarzenegger film, but the technical presentation of it is far higher here because of Verhoeven's ability with the visual look of his films. The effects may have dated - a weird creepiness to seeing a distorted Arnie face made out of prosthetics that is bulging like he's stuck his finger far too high up his nose - but it's almost all practical, having a distinct, otherworldly look befitting a cinematic depiction of the future than a realistic one. It occasionally scrapes the satire of Verhoeven's other American films, but it plays with the idea of memories through gunfights without the obvious political digs, all interlocking together in one single reality that is deeply flawed. That, whether Total Recall's narrative for three quarters of it is real or not, the world it depicts is chaotic beneath the surface nonethless, and is now spread to the rest of our galaxy, one that has also been part of the director's trademarks even when depicting real Dutch history such as in Katie Tippel (1975). It's far from the best of his filmography, just in the Hollywood films too with Starship Troopers looming over it all, but Total Recall still has virtues. They are both as an Arnie film - some of his best one liners at least - and as a film with a sliver of subversion, whose ending could be exceptionally dark even if it's supposed to be a triumphant one. It's completely unsubtle, but set up at the start, it uses this to create a fascinating, and entertaining, vacuum in action film tropes by making everything (possibly) a theatrics that a married man, a construction worker, would wish he would do in his everyday life, but shown to us in this film. I have not mentioned that this is based on a Philip K. Dick short story because I have only read one work of his so far, his novel Eye in the Sky (1957). It is befitting however; after a freak accident, a group of people are shown the insides of each others' minds, worlds wrapped around their subconscious desires and murkiest beliefs. Playing with this idea that, maybe, just maybe, we're watching an Arnie film dreamt by Arnie, as gory and ridiculous as an Arnie film dreamt about would be, it results in a far more tantalising and appropriate take on the ideas of human fantasy. In The 4th Man, the protagonist, an author, creates his novels by imaging things that are fake are real to the point he believes them, potentially a downfall for psychosis unless he was actually right, presented to us again with the least expect person, the star of Commando (1985), a man used to fighting chainmail wearing, shouty Australians than the concept of fake reality itself. The cartoonish hero given an existential crisis in a cartoon. Only Paul Verhoeven's cinema crosses such lines like this. 

From http://www.doblu.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/totalrecallmindbending4346.jpg

The ‘Unfairly Abandoned Film’ of Cinema [Showgirls (1995)]

From http://d.ratingmovies.com/servlet/Main/CoverDisplay/Showgirls_(1995).jpg?film_rn=996

Dir. Paul Verhoeven

France-USA

Film #27 of The ‘Worst’ of Cinema

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It is amazing that Paul Verhoeven exists. There have been European directors, known for art films, which get put at the helm of Hollywood blockbusters. Verhoeven is something else. That he went from this box office bomb to the large scale 1997 adaptation of Starship Troopers – which has its cake and eats it majestically by both revealing in the nudity and gore, but with enough morality to make itself a satirical masterpiece that decimates the fascist tendencies of science fiction – is incredible. A director as intelligent as Verhoeven, and as subversive as he is still, would not walk into a film like Showgirls blindly. Following a down-and-out girl Nomi (Elizabeth Berkley) as she travels to Las Vegas with star struck aspirations in her eyes, the film is a fairytale. It is comparable to classic Hollywood melodrama, with its sweeping camera curves and brightly coloured and decorated environments, following a wide eyed young girl – Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz, Alice and her Wonderland – but one inside an NC-17 film with graphic nudity, continuous swearing, back stabbings and obscene neon lights. It’s Oz on a terrible cocaine daze, and where the monkeys don’t have wings but run amok around the dressing room and leave faeces over the stage.

From http://i68.photobucket.com/albums/i33/shannymaldonado/STILLS/AWP10SH.jpg

And wide eyed young girl is appropriate for Nomi. Berkley has been lambasted for her role, but it slowly dawned on me, once I got use to her abrasive personality and the twisted quirks of Joe Eszterhas’ script, that she is a little girl in the body of a beautiful but far-from-innocent woman. She is tough, but at times cradling or holding a symbolic teddy bear missing an eye, she’s also childish, pointlessly obstinate even to people trying to help her and consumes junk food like a five year old. She will have to learn a lot, or even less, committing questionable behaviour before she becomes Cristal Connors (Gina Gershon), giant mouth and teeth, sequined and moulded eyes and face, and Texas drawl hiding someone who has fought mercilessly, sadistically, for her top spot in Vegas. And that turns out to be Showgirls’ ignored virtue in that it’s a slap in the face, contained in a glamorous mirror, of this sort of place and of this kind of film narrative, full of betrayals that are petty rather than dramatic, slime horn males whoring out their female clients, while a strip club is at least honest and thoughtful about allowing their male client to see the women’s naked bodies, and insidious behaviour. Only Nomi’s friend Molly (Gina Ravera), a seamstress for the major Vegas theatre production Nomi becomes part of, is completely virtuous and free of sin, only to get thrown in the garbage in a horrifying way. Eszterhas’ script by itself is too lurid and ridiculous to be completely serious, but I have to wonder if Eszterhas himself or Verhoeven when he got the script realised that it worked in depicting a Las Vegas that is so wrong and bizarre as it is seen in the film and added to it. Three years later the adaption of Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas (1998) was released, but despite having only read Hunter S. Thompson’s original book way back in college years ago, the film feels too arch and kooky to work now when I rewatched it. Showgirls shows this place far more potently, more decadent and depraved, with only my memories of Thompson’s original prose as a more damning piece of this city of gold shown in the film.

From http://static.cinemagia.ro/img/db/movie/00/08/08/showgirls-853426l.jpg

The film is a sordid overload. There is so much female nudity, especially from Berkley who I did grown up seeing in Saved By The Bell (1989-1993), that it batters you senseless and yet, to its advantage, makes every moment of it stand out. The dialogue is legitimately abstract at times, perfectly conveying the melodramatic tone, of a young woman climbing up in fame in all its clichés, while being jaw dropping in where it goes, such as Nomi and Crystal, in the only time they have a friendly banter with each other, discussing eating the same kind of dog food in the past. Having worked with writers who have had absurdist ideas in their scripts, intentional or not, like the news breaks in RoboCop (1987), I can see Verhoeven in his second collaboration with Eszterhas taking advantage of how ridiculous the film gets. And if the film is camp, the Las Vegas shown is horrifying in its gaudiness in the first place, the reptile zoo Hunter S. Thompson envisioned while on mass quantities of drugs even more insane and over congested as a g-string and shrimp cocktail hellhole. Made in the nineties, the many clear layers of the film, even if moments of Showgirls do not work on this first viewing, are clear even if they are within an exploitative tone. It’s a far more fascinating take on the struggles a female performer has to go through – the pain, the leering from men – than Black Swan (2010) by embracing its scuzziness, rather than being above it, and by questioning the whole desire at reaching the goal if it makes you less of a human being. What could be Nomi’s potential love interest (Glenn Plummer) skirts between the one who got away and another victim/predator of the Vegas strip because of his human flaws, while Kyle MacLachlan’s character, perfectly played by him, shows a two faced nature that is fitting for the whole narrative. Yes, the sex scene with him where Berkley flops around like a fish in a pool is silly, but its clear Verhoeven is between a balancing act between intentional silliness for humour and kicking this type of story in the ribs in a damning way.

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It’s not the sort of film, sadly, that large audiences, and more sadly, film critics like, which dares to not be a safe art cinema drama which repeats everything we know of already, or a merely okay genre film which doesn’t push itself into taking risks, but something which is confrontational, is attempting its hardest in a sincere way to be something brave even if it has unintentionally funny scenes, and more of a taboo for critics, dares to skirt and question the line between being serious and satirical, not in a cynical wink-wink sort of way accepted now, but in a way that relishes the sleaze but cautions people of how terrible it would be to see in real life. It would be viewed as hypocritical, but Verhoeven actually managed to balance out the fine line between this in his American films by making sure the critiques of his own material within the films was poignant and black humoured rather than tedious moralising. Very few Hollywood directors dare this sort of thing now sadly, with maybe a few exceptions like Neveldine/Taylor being the only ones in existence, and sadly not getting the chances to make as many films like Verhoeven let alone high budgeted ones. Probably the shift to more teenage friendly content, probably not helped by Showgirls, waving the flag for the NC-17 rating, bombing as badly as it did, has affected this, but  I would also argue we’ve let the politically correct mentality, mixed with the hipster sense of irony, undermine American cinema, where films with sexual content are not actually sensuous  but passionless, where violence is festishistic or numbingly forced like Michael Haneke fostered on the world with Funny Games (1997), when once before very violent films like RoboCop actually made you cringe with real pain and horror even if you laughed or cheered it on. Feminism in cinema has been changed from being a real drive for women’s voices to be more heard of in films to being an excuse to accuse any film which plays with titillation or real sexuality as sexist, and the desire for peaceful liberalism hides a lot more morally objectionable and sick attitudes to violence in films than what Arnold Schwarzenegger did to villains in Total Recall (1990). Most films now are ‘edgy’ but have no actual courage to offend, divide, scrutinise, dissect  or willingly blur the lines between mere titillation and real intellectual meat, and finally seeing Showgirls after all this time, its disappointing something like this no longer, unless pigs fly, will get released in multiplex theatres if it did back in 1995. I want the people who like this as a legitimately great, or flawed but fascinating, film to crush the individuals that merely view it as empty, crap trash and take control of its cult following from them, the side where champions of vulgar auteurism on sites like MUBI.com and the legendary French director Jacques Rivette can bond over it, despite being on different spectrums of cinema at times, and give something like this the due it deserves or admit that it was a brave attempt that, fittingly, has survived many of the critics of the time who lambasted it.

From http://img11.nnm.ru/c/c/b/5/9/6955bdab97576f866108dbb82c9.jpg