Architecture and Film I

I finally got around to watching the 2012 remake of Total Recall yesterday. I'm going to leave the obvious criticisms out (no Arnold?) and just consider the architecture.

This version of Total Recall - to be honest I don't really remember the earlier version that well because it was kind of crappy - is set in a world devastated by some kind of chemical or biological war. The only two places fit for human habitation are Britain and Australia. That doesn't make any sense but let's not dwell... The most valuable commodity on the planet is space, which, again doesn't make any sense since if only Britain and Australia were left things like copper, nickel, iron, oil, natural gas, and about a million other things would be more valuable than the space required for a population decimated by war. But space it is.

Total Recall creates an architectural world based on a very old premise - the walled city. This premise is usually more interesting in its inverted form, where the wall city contains rather than protects, as in Escape from New York (1981) for example. But the question of space and the condition of the walled city is really secondary here to the kind of place the art direction wanted. The plot, I suspect, was radically altered to suit the gorgeous cities created for the film.

Most of the action takes place in Australia (called "the Colony"). It is the other side of the tracks meets other side of the world. It's dirty and crowded and it rains a lot. Clearly the set design owes something to Blade Runner (1982) but then, every sci-fi movie that doesn't take place entirely in outer space owes something to Blade Runner. And to Moshe Safdie's Habitat.

The British side of the divide owes a lot to early Modernist imaginings of the 21st Century city. Here is a comparison between the Capital and an imaginary New York:

The common elements are obvious, just slicker in the modern version. But also note how clean it is for a city with an enormous population problem. It's also dry and, in the movie, shot almost entirely during the day. In contrast, here is the Colony:

It's dirty, wet, and claustrophobic. There is a simple visual metaphor happening here - the main character (he has about six names in the movie so I'll call him Colin Farrell) cannot escape his problems, they even invade his dreams. The city in the Colony does not admit the possibility of a non-city (a sub-urban or rural condition). There is the omni-present city and there is chemical death. It's a nice touch. If I could find better screen caps I'd point out some of the really nice architectural details about the Colony - it's sections must be incredibly messed up. There are windows at ground level in one unit that (when CF slides through them) open on head height (or higher) of the unit directly adjacent, there is a wonderful scene (from an architectural point of view) where CF gets chased from his apartment down through about fifty levels of living units, onto a river which is so crowded he never gets his feet wet. It's a crazy dream mash-up of Hong Kong, Europe after WWII, Safdie's Habitat, and about a million sci fi references.

The movie makes an interesting social metaphor as well. Since only Britain and Australia are left - and they are very approximately opposite each other on the globe - they represent obverse social situations. Britain is for the haves, Australia for the have nots. They are connected by a (conceptually absurd) link called the Fall - an elevator that travels through the Earth's molten core without melting or even getting dirty. Absurd. But the image of two walled cities, distinct but connect to each other (and only each other) is relevant given the current social and economic situation many places in the world: Ceuta, Palestine, the US-Mexico border. More would probably have been made of this connection had the characters stopped shooting for more than six or seven seconds at a time.

Total Recall is not a good movie. The action never stops it just pounds you into a state of numbness and the whole thing is absolutely humourless. But it is the most architecturally interesting English language movie I've seen in a long time.