HOLOGRAM MAN [1995 / DDS]
Realism in cinema, or any art form, is more a cultural artifact than a style. In the rare cases that something gets labeled as a work of realism, it is a reflection of a particular place in time that resonates in a way that the viewer feels seen; deeply in some essential manner much like the dream that we wake up from and are shocked to discover wasn’t waking life. What makes these works of art astonishing is that so many collectively can agree on their realism. In time though, that realism will always be revealed to be exactly what art is: a representation.
Cinema, by combining sensations for both the eyes and ears, through the ungraspable medium of time, is always a work of impressionism. So as visuals and sound swirl in and out, with time disrupted over and over again by editing, something must be the glue grounding it all in some form of sanity. This leads us to believe that script writing is the backbone of film, the true anchor of it’s narrative drive with everything else sort of hanging on for the ride like a drunk teen standing in a convertible going too fast. With this understanding of construction, all film then is of the genre “fairly real” which is good enough since absolute realism is at best a temporary illusion. The other extreme, of abstraction, is relegated to the idea of motion paintings and then we debate forever the tedious topic on wether of not late era David Lynch films actually have a plot and meaning. Meanwhile, the powerful illusion of film fools us all by constantly embracing abstraction and non-prose driven story telling to transport us to other worlds just as real as our non-sequitur dreams. Welcome to ‘Hologram Man.’
‘Hologram Man’ is story telling nearly 100% constructed from the specialized expert skill sets of the filmmakers: Stunts, pyro, and demolition. I’m not sure if I could watch 90 min of just random stunt footage without drifting off, no matter how impressive they were. ‘Hologram Man’ writes with stunts though. It writes with explosions. It writes in fire. I would love to see the storyboards for this film, it is such a masterpiece of purely visual storytelling. Everything is coordinated both within frame and in the editing so that people flying through the air, cars being turned to ash, and CGI emerging from the rubble all string together as a competently mesmerizing story. Yes, there is dialogue, but it isn’t what binds. This film isn’t just a testimony to the possibilities of cinema, it is an example of just how important and wise these unsung sides of filmmaking truly are. They prove that the ways we can tell a story stretch far beyond writing a bunch words. That all said, ‘Hologram Man’ also has one of the best final lines of dialogue in any movie you’ll ever hear. I could tell you, but honestly you just need to witness it for yourself.
