Couldn’t Total Recall apply here. It’s been a while since I have seen it, but IIRC, Arnie is never quite sure if he’s a good guy or a bad guy through most of the movie. He also has no idea who his friends and enemies are, or even who his own wife is. At one point, one of the people he is looking for turns out to be the cab driver.
He burns the picture of himself, grinning madly, covered in the blood from his wife’s attackers.
Ooops, sorry. I didn’t realize the OP meant a twist as in, you’re shocked and surprised. I interpreted twist more as, you think the protagonist will be redeemed but he turns out to be a monster to the conclusion of the story. I guess others misinterpreted this also, since I find Scarlett O’Hara to be as unrepentant as Tony Soprano, from beginning to end.
But I like the Paul Atreides mention-- you really do not understand the magnitude of his monstrousness until the end of God Emperor.
I can’t recall the book, it’s been so long – but in the movie, kinda, IIRC. The Arnold character WAS a bad guy who had his memory erased to infiltrate the opposition, but at the end he turns traitor and saves the world.
Total Recall wasn’t inspired by a novel. It was a short story. The short story only inspired the first half of the film (approximately). The rest of the film was completely original.
Heh.
Yeah, it seems to me pretty clear that anything shot in “normal” format is presented as actually happening. But anything shot in black and white format is supposed to be Lenny’s memory. And we know that Lenny’s memory is completely unreliable. And we also know that the things Lenny says, and the things other characters say isn’t neccesarily the truth.
Other characters lie to Lenny, Lenny lies to other characters. Sometimes we see them lie and eventually we learn that they’re lying, like with Trinity. Other times they admit to lying to Lenny, like the hotel clerk who tells Lenny he’s renting several rooms in the hotel, but that Lenny has forgotten it, and that he’ll forget that the hotel clerk told him. And of course Teddy, who apparently has been using Teddy to kill various people, for reasons of his own.
But Lenny is a monster. That picture of him grinning after having killed his wife’s attacker? He destroys it, because if he killed his wife’s attacker then his quest for revenge is over, and since he won’t be able to remember that he killed his wife’s attacker, he’ll never be able to stop the desire for revenge. That missing page from the police report that contains the true story? Lenny destroyed it himself. And how about that sequence where Lenny hires a prostitute, knowing that he’ll forget she was a prostitute and think she’s his wife for a while? And he provides her with props from his wife (or are they?), which he later burns. And of course, the part where Lenny, in revenge against Teddy for revealing the truth (or is it?), plants evidence that he knows his future self will interpret to mean that Teddy was his wife’s killer.
And the sick part is, from what Teddy says, the person Lenny triumphantly killed could have been anybody. We see Lenny execute two people for being his wife’s attacker, he kills Teddy and he kill’s Trinity’s boyfriend, each time believing he’s killed his wife’s attacker. And he’s killed others in the past and he’ll continue in the future.
And we don’t even know that Lenny’s wife is actually dead. Maybe she left him, and he made up the whole story. Or perhaps Lenny somehow killed her…either he mixed up his wife’s medication somehow, and then attributed that story to Sammy Jankis, or maybe HE was the violent attacker that he’s been searching for.
Not that any of these interpretations have to be correct or false. The point of the movie is that the past only exists in our memories, so how can we say what happened in the past? We remember things happening, but our memories lie to us. And if we lie to ourselves enough, we turn into monsters who are capable of anything.
Well, actually, the aunts have offed one more than Jonathon. (at least in the play)
OH and speaking of Harrison Ford, the movie Presumed Innocent is a great example of the OP, although Mr. Ford is not the person I’m talking about.
I actually came into this thread to metion Presumed Innocent, although technically it wasn’t the protagonist who was the bad guy–he was just protecting her through a misguided sense of guilt and obligation.
Lemur866, thanks for the synopsis. A few questions, if you don’t mind, following your quotes.
But the things Lenny says could be, right?
Why can’t he tattoo it?
How did he get his debilitating injuries?
You are, of course, correct. I will have to view it again, with what you have said in mind.
I don’t think he wants to. Out of anger at being told the truth (?), he frames Teddy in his notes so that after his next amnesia, he’ll kill Teddy.
Well, of course some things Lenny says could be the truth. They could really be true, they could be false but Lenny mistakenly believes they are true, they could be false but Lenny delusionally belives they are true, or they could be false but Lenny lies about them.
Ferret Herder is correct about the tattoo. Lenny doesn’t WANT to solve his wife’s murder. According to Teddy, he’s already gotten his revenge, but of course he forgot about it. A normal person would eventually get over their need for revenge. But since Lenny can’t remember anything that happened since his wife’s attack, it’s like it just happened. He can’t get over it, because it’s not the distant past for him, but the recent past. If he had a tattoo that told him that he solved his wife’s murder, his life would have no purpose. The only thing Lenny lives for is revenge, and if he got his revenge he’d have nothing left except to sit in a rest home and watch TV…not the shows, they’d be too long, but the commercials.
And that presumes that Lenny’s presentation of the attack has any truth to it. Was his wife really attacked by a stranger? We really don’t know for sure. And if there was no attack, how did Lenny get his condition? As Lenny explains, there could be a physical cause, or a psychological cause. If Lenny was the real attacker, or if he accidentally killed his wife through an overdose, his amnesia could be psychological.
can’t believe nobody’s mentioned 'identity.’
great movie.
I assume you’re talking about Claire’s dad - the guy who was totally peachy-keen with murder, torture, and genocide…until his daughter was going to be the one under the scalpel?
-Joe
Edward Hermann seems to be a nice, helpful guy in The Lost Boys… but he’s not.
Sorry to bring this back so long after the fact, but I got to thinking about it the other night. Would George and Lenny qualify in Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men?