Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!wuarchive!mit-eddie!thakur
From: cruz@lab.ultra.nyu.edu (Nancy Cruz)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.cinema
Subject: Re: Total Recall: subtle blatancy (spoilers)
Keywords: blatant subtlety
Message-ID: <1990Oct7.174450.20678@eddie.mit.edu>
Date: 7 Oct 90 17:44:50 GMT
References: <1990Sep22.064744.12151@eddie.mit.edu> <1990Sep25.024218.20650@eddie.mit.edu>
Sender: thakur@eddie.mit.edu (Manavendra K. Thakur)
Reply-To: cruz@lab.ultra.nyu.edu (Nancy Cruz)
Followup-To: rec.arts.cinema
Organization: New York University Ultracomputer Research Lab
Lines: 43
Approved: thakur@zerkalo.harvard.edu


In article <1990Sep25.024218.20650@eddie.mit.edu> latta%graft.Berkeley.EDU@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU (Craig R. Latta) writes:
>
>	Recently, in article <1990Sep22.064744.12151@eddie.mit.edu>,
>att.com!ncsc6!dgp (Dennis Pelton) wrote:
>
>> I'm a science fiction fan (a "serious" one, whatever that means), and
>> would like a deeper discussion of Total Recall than has occured in the
>> other newsgroups.  Particularly, the "was it real or was it a dream"
>> question interests me.

I am not a sci fi fanatic, but I do enjoy many sci fi authors.  I am
glad to see that a dialogue is occurring about this movie.  It was
awesome (and I am NOT an Arnie fan).

There were two questions that prevailed IMHO.

1)  The age old philisophical question of existence.  When Arnie's
    consiousness was altered, was he altered.  Can he be held
responsible for his past actions and ideas? (Is he a hero or a
villain, Should I hate him or should I like him?) 

2)  I felt that throughout the film, I was experiencing it like a
dream.  The camera shots were from unusual angles and as you mentioned
the violence was graphic.  But in an almost surreal way. (Pardon my
lack of cinema terminology, I'm a lit major);-P  In the end, I felt
used, deceived and totally confused; as if the sole purposed of this movie
was to play with 'my head'.  Here is this person who I thought was a
hero, but is really a villian... or is he??  and  "Is this movie just
one long dream sequence?"


Re the dream sequence questions, I recall at one point Arnie must
distinguish whether he is dreaming, and determines he is not based on
perspiration.  This could be viewed in one of two ways a)  This proves
to us that he is NOT dreaming   b)  It is used as a clue for the
audience, ie., Arnie does not perspire once in the whole movie or does
he?


Nancy
cruz@lab.ultra.nyu.edu
cruz@acf4.nyu.edu