I wish there was an anti-mnemonic device I could use to forget this movie.

When I looked at the syllabus, I thought the only movie that would be ruined by its acting was Total Recall. I was so wrong. Johnny Mnemonic has far less than stellar performances by none other than the wooden man himself, Keanu Reeves, backed up by Ice T pre-SVU, and the always delightful Henry Rollins (this time playing a geeky doctor whose only costuming was a pair of glasses- I half expected him to turn into super man at one point).

As a whole, the movie has a lot of interesting aspects to it. Particularly that of its various moments of being a modern film noir. The seed for this idea is planted explicitly early on, right when Johnny is loading the data that would today simply fill an ipod into his advanced tech brain. The Pharmakom people are playing Humphrey Bogart in the background. There are then a series of canted shots throughout the film, creating a lot of unease, along with shots so dark they may as well often be in black and white and only accented with other colors. The clearest shot of this, though, is during the chase scene where Keanu says WHAT-ARE-YOU-DOING in the most robotic of ways, and he runs and you see first his shadow then him run in and out of the shot. Furthermore, the plot follows a noir story, with the expected result, twist, and then final twist.

The reading for last week was far more interesting and even touched on some movies I really like (or at least the stories they are based on, like Crash). As a whole, the article is a discussion of whether or not computers, cyborgs, etc ought to inherit the earth (a la Moravec) and how this has played out in most Hollywood movies. First of all, Moravec is insane. I agree with Deleuze and Guattari, that his ideals are based so entirely in the idea of capitalism, the free market, to the extent where the accumulation of spectacles becomes so great and the system is so determined to reproduce itself that even the consumers are consumed. But second, I think the argument about Hollywood is really interesting, and ties to the movie well. Springer writes, “Cyborgs in Hollywood films are often motivated by repressed human memories than by mere mechanical problem solving.” She then goes on to cite the examples of RoboCop and Eve of Destruction, as well as a slew of newer movies including Johnny Mnemonic.

And on this level I take real issue with the movie on a plot level. Johnny’s brain was removed. HOW ARE HIS MEMORIES FROM THAT PART OF HIS BRAIN REPRESSED? I just feel like they should be gone. Oh well. You can’t expect the plot of a movie with a drug-addicted hyper-intelligent dolphin and a Jesus-like assassin to make perfect sense, I suppose.

Total Recall

There are two things I find really interesting about Total Recall.

1. How intricate the story is, particularly to leave doubt in the audience’s mind.

2. How much Arnold’s very existence in a movie can make me think it’s poorly done.

Now, the story is rather well put together (which is not surprising given its basis in Philip Dick). It takes the viewer back and forth through believing what is happening to be a dream and believing it to be real. This occurs first when the doctor says he’s reacting poorly and the nurse says she hasn’t implanted anything yet. It then flips back to perhaps being a dream with the entrance of the doctor, and then back out of it when the doctor begins to sweat. But it’s never conclusive. There is a lot of explicit linking to it being real, like Arnold’s perspective, the story being set up to need Rekall’s existence, and so on. But at the same time, all of the subtlety points to it being a dream. Like Arnold creating the girl that shows up, him choosing there to be alien relics identical to those on Mars, the very spy program being called blue skies on Mars, and so on.

And then you can look elsewhere for how obvious this is. No one can make convincing arguments about it, IMDb is completely unresolved (not that those posting are always the brightest).

I think this brings about something interesting, though. Those that pay more attention to the subtext of a movie and the seemingly random comments that are unimportant will lean toward thinking the entire movie is a dream because of the hints dropped earlier, while those watching just to be entertained will think it is real because that is what is explicit in the movie.

But of course, a lot of this depth is lost because Arnold stars in it. I can’t explain why, but his very presence makes me think the movie was just thrown together and a hack and slash job. Even though it’s made from an amazing story and actually is decently (actually, not really decent anything but plot direction) done. But still. I think we all understand.

Arnold makes bad movies.