Philosophy in Total Recall

In the film Total Recall, cinema plays an important role in developing the philosophical issues of technology and identity. Visual representation of the changes that are felt by characters throughout the film is important for the audience to understand intuition. I think the film represents the main character’s issues with technology and identity through the struggle of intuition. In this way, I found it interesting that intuition does not alter fate in the narrative of the story. The character, Quaid is seemingly powerless over his personal intuition. Despite his premonitions he still cannot change his destiny, showing how inevitable loss is. In this sense, I think the ideas in the film correlate to the statement by Gilbert Ryle on Concepts of the Mind. “Concepts of mind and identity should be investigated first in terms of logic and language, not in terms of existence and purported ghosts that haunt that existence. As beings we have behaviors, and symbolizing some of those behaviors or functions with the use of concepts and metaphors helps us get a handle on them. We get no additional handle by mistaking the logic of such concepts and metaphors as deserving a special kind of ‘existence’.” Using this example, throughout the film, there is an analysis of the logic and the way that the story is unfolded helps to symbolize the behavior of the character. The film itself is also useful to express the ideas of identity. The film itself is a metaphor as it represents and highlights reality and identity. I found a good example of this in the rebel leader Kuato from Mars who says to Quaid ``A man is defined by his actions not his memories” I found this especially applicable to Ryle on his concepts of the mind as the main character is seemingly in a battle with his mind and intuition to find the truth about his past only reason and logic are his allies on the path to discovery. At the end of the film, the ending in question relates to Ryle again as one of the characters says kiss me before you wake up. This moment is special as it leaves the audience in that sense of existence. As Ryle confronts logical points the usage of logic and metaphors is not deserving of the explanation for existence. The film does this in a way by depriving the audience of the clear notion that what they watched actually happened within Quaid's realm or perhaps he was, in reality, living out his dream from Total Rekall all along. The questioning of the reality of the story leaves philosophical questions and opens the film for discussion in an elegant manner.