Total Recall — was it all in his head?

I refer, of course, to the 1990 film Total Recall, directed by Paul Verhoeven and starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. (Spoilers follow.)

Arnold Schwarzenegger plays Douglas Quaid, a regular joe construction worker, in the near future when humans have founded a colony on the planet Mars. Quaid has been having recurring dreams about Mars. And in these dreams there is a beautiful brunette, much to the annoyance of Quaid’s wife of eight years, Lori, played by Sharon Stone. Quaid tries to persuade Lori to take a trip to Mars, but Lori persistently resists or changes the subject.

Quaid hears about a company called Recall where you can have memories implanted, including a trip to Mars. They put you under for awhile, insert the memory of your perfect vacation, and when you wake up it’s like you’ve really been there. There’s just one problem: one of Quaid’s coworkers says his friend went to Recall and was lobotomized. Quaid goes to Recall anyway.

Quaid orders the Mars vacation, but the sales director offers Quaid an upgrade: the Secret Agent package. You get to be a spy going undercover on Mars, discovering an ancient alien civilization, and in the end you beat the bad guy, get the girl, and save the planet. Quaid takes it.

And here is where the question comes in. Everything that happens after they strap Quaid into a chair and put him under at Recall — is it real? or is it all part of his Mars Secret Agent memory package?

Immediately after they start the operation, Quaid flips out and starts yelling at the doctors “YOU BLEW MY COVER!” The sales director thinks he is acting out the Mars Secret Agent package, but the head doctor explains that they have not implanted it yet, and Quaid must really be a secret agent — which means someone in the government erased his memory. They realize that they’ve stumbled upon big trouble, so they wipe Quaid’s memory of his visit to Recall and chuck him in a cab in the street. But soon after Quaid awakes, his coworkers at the construction site attack him because he popped his memory cap; and then his wife Lori tries to kill him, who reveals that she is an agent placed with Quaid to watch him and make sure he doesn’t remember anything. She says that they were set up on Earth six weeks ago, and the whole eight years of their marriage was an invented memory implanted in his brain. After Lori fails to kill Quaid, another group of agents led by Richter (Michael Ironside) pursue him. Quaid gets contacted by a rogue agent who delivers a package full of gadgets that help him escape Richter. The package contains a video recording made by Quaid before his memory was erased — when his name was Hauser and he was a secret agent working for the governor of Mars, Cohaagen. The recording tells Quaid “Get your ass to Mars!”

From this point on the intricacies of the plot, which is pleasantly complicated, need not be recounted. On Mars, Quaid meets the brunette who was in his dreams, Mileena, whom he apparently knew before as Hauser. Together they defeat Cohaagen who has been using his monopolous control of oxygen to exploit the Martian colony. They discover an ancient alien machine buried under the surface of Mars, and activate it. It turns out to be an immense reactor that melts the underground glaciers and produces enough air for the whole planet.

But wait. Isn’t this exactly what Quaid was promised by the sales agent at Recall?

Well, the movie reminds us of this at the end. Quaid stands on the top of a ridge, looking down on the free colonists venturing out onto the Martian surface. He turns to Mileena and asks her if this is all a dream. She replies, “Kiss me quick before you wake up.”

It could be that everything that happened was real, and Quaid actually was a secret agent. But it could also be that Quaid is still at Recall, living out the scenario that they are implanting in his head. Actually, there are several hints given through the movie that Quaid has had a psychotic episode during the implantation process and that Quaid is stuck in the dream-world, which has got out of control and taken over his brain. According to this version of the movie, Quaid’s freak-out at Recall, his waking up in a cab and being attacked by co-workers, his wife revealing that she is not really his wife — all this is part of the dream-world he requested from Recall, only run amuk.

So which is it? Is it real, or is Quaid stuck in his dream world?

Well, it must first be said that the movie will not allow a perfectly consistent solution either way. There are certain events that only make sense if everything is real, and certain other events that only make sense if it is all a dream. But I say that everything is real — Quaid really is a secret agent. The most conclusive evidence points to the whole movie, from beginning to end, taking place in reality and not in Quaid’s dream.

But first, the points against. What is the evidence that Quaid is stuck in the dream-world he requested at Recall? This really amounts to two points.

I. When the doctors are setting up Quaid’s dream-scenario, they ask him questions to help him design the woman he is going to meet. He says he wants an athletic brunette, sleazy but demure. As his eyes are going blank he sees the computer monitor displaying the woman they’ve set up for the program: it is Mileena, whom he meets shortly on Mars. This very clearly points to the rest of the movie being a dream, and is hard to explain otherwise.

II. The plot of the movie perfectly fulfills everything Quaid requested in his interview at Recall. He turns out to be a spy, he goes under cover to Mars, he discovers the relics of an alien civilization, he kills his enemies, he gets the girl of his dreams, and he saves the planet. And Quaid’s question at the end of the movie is plainly meant to remind us that Quaid has gotten precisely what he asked for, and to leave us wondering if he is still at Recall.

In support of the events being real, there are the following points.

I. Quaid’s freak-out at Recall. This scene can have no place in Quaid’s dream-world, either as part of the memory implant or as part of an operation gone-wrong that leaves him trapped in the fantasy, and for a simple reason — they wipe his memory and Quaid knows nothing about it for the rest of the movie. But maybe this is getting a bit too clever; we can leave this one on the side.

II. The doctor from Recall’s appearance later in the movie. There is a scene on Mars where a man in a lab coat shows up and tells Quaid that he is still at Recall and his having a psychotic episode. He claims that he has been inserted into Quaid’s dream-world in order to talk him down. Quaid, he says, has become invested in the fantasy and they cannot get him out of it unless he chooses to reject the dream-world. The doctor offers him a pill which is “a symbol of his desire to return to reality.” If Quaid takes the pill, he will wake up. Quaid considers this, and then aks the doctor, “if you’re not really here, then what happens if I shoot you right now?” The doctor says that it would mean Quaid has destroyed any chance to return to reality — his mind would be finally broken and the dream-world would go mad, taking Quaid withi t. Quaid is almost convinced, but as he places the pill in his mouth he sees a bead of sweat drip down the doctor’s face. He shoots him, and then a gang of Richter’s men burst into the room, having apparently been waiting while the doctor tried to trick Quaid.

Certainly this scene could possibly stand on the other list, as evidence that Quaid is still at Recall. But there is good reason to take it as confirmation that Quaid is, in fact, awake. First, Quaid kills the doctor and none of the threats he made actually happen. Quaid does not go mad nor does the world start going crazy around him. And the threats seem somewhat improbable when he makes them. But more important is that bead of sweat. Why would he be sweating in fear if he was an image inserted into Quaid’s dream? More likely Quaid got it right, and the doctor was sent by Cohaagen and Richter to try to trap Quaid.

III. Quaid’s dreams. Quaid dreamed about Mileena before he ever went to Recall. This makes sense if Quaid is really a secret agent from Mars, who knew Mileena before his memory was erased. It also explains very well his obsession with Mars. Admittedly another possibility is that Mileena has the appearance that she does because the doctors at Recall made her look like the woman of his dreams, so this could go either way.

IV. Quaid and Lori’s marriage. Now I play my trump card. The strongest evidence in favour of the whole movie being real and Quaid really being a secret agent is the way we see Quaid and Lori’s marriage play out in the first few minutes of the film. To put it simply, their marriage looks like a fraud, and Lori acts highly suspicious. In the first scene when Quaid tells her he dreamed about Mars again and she asks about the brunette, she flips straight from annoyed jealousy to sleazy sexual advances. The entire conversation at the breakfast table she appears to be trying to change the subject and distract Quaid from thinking about Mars. It makes perfect sense that she is a secret agent who was assigned to Quaid six weeks ago to keep him from returning to Mars.

If I’m right, and the whole movie does take place in reality, what then is the point of having Recall in the film at all? First of all it's just a cool idea. Actually it’s genious. What Recall does is plant doubt in our minds, which then is allowed to keep us guessing at every point in the movie, and moreso because they play with it and keep reminding us of it. And it gives them a little twist to throw at you in the end, to leave you scratching your head when it’s over. It gets you to go over the movie again in your head and try to put the pieces together. And that does something very important — in a word, it makes the film memorable. Have you ever had a dream that seemed incredibly interesting or important, and you said to yourself that you would think about it again later that day — but when the time came to think about it, you couldn’t remember a thing? But some dreams you can remember for the rest of your life, and never forget. Why? Because you thought about those ones when they were still fresh in your mind. Very likely you told someone about them soon after you woke up. The act of going over them makes them stick in your mind. Well, the plot about Recall and the question whether the whole film is in Arnold’s head does the same thing for this movie. That’s why it’s there.

Quaid really is a secret agent. And that makes the ending of Total Recall all the more satisfying. He really did get exactly what he asked for.