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.
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.
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.
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.
Nearing the end of this series. The only thing that cause a problem with continuing this next year is finding films for all twenty six letters of the alphabet again. Xala, while very much a satire too, is something a little different for me to cover as being more of a dramatic film, but its great to include it and expand the range of films and countries I've covered a little further.
