Hologram for a King

Hologram for a King is based on a Dave Eggers novel by the same name. The book was well received, at least by the critical community. It got favorable reviews in both the New York Times and in the San Francisco Chronicle, while also being a finalist for the National Book Awards. I haven’t read the novel in question, but I also can’t help but imagine all of the ways that the movie’s mediocrity is likely rooted in an inability to translate what works in the novel to what appears on screen.

The movie has some noticeable similarities to the Beckett play Waiting for Godot, in that the main thrust of the story, such that there is one, is about our hero characters stuck doing basically nothing waiting for someone who never seems to show up. While in the play, the two protagonists wait for the titular Godot, in Hologram for a King our protagonist waits for the arrival of the Saudi king, who repeatedly reschedules his meetings to the point where you begin to believe they are never going to happen…although Alan does eventually get to make his presentation, a mercy never offered to the subjects of Beckett’s masterwork.

Yet, despite that mercy, the movie does an excellent job of cultivating a similar kind of absurdism. There is this feeling that Tom Hanks’ Alan, the main character of the movie, is constantly in a state of running in place. Immense pressure from work and family back home is contrasted with the total lack of discernible forward progress in anything in Saudi Arabia, despite all efforts by Alan to change his fate.

Unfortunately, all this actively doing nothing doesn’t quite hit the mark. Alan’s existence in Saudi Arabia, always waiting for various enigmatic people who never seem to show up, filling his days with repeated trivialities that build to nothing, doesn’t actually communicate thematic absurdity like Beckett’s play. Instead, it comes across as aimless and boring. Hologram for a King feels like it is going nowhere because it is going nowhere, instead of feeling like it is going nowhere with purpose, if you understand my distinction.

For example, a major story element is the impromptu relationship Alan forms with a local taxi driver who acts as his chauffeur when Alan repeatedly misses his designated shuttle due to a maladjusted sleep cycle brought on by a combination of jet lag and anxiety. This relationship is set up as something central to the story as the driver, Yousef, acts as local guide and source for exposition, character foil, and occasional moral compass to Alan. This culminates in a trip Alan takes to visit Yousef’s family, taking him away from the steady routine of hotel, conference center, and back to the hotel.

Only, this whole storyline ultimately proves pointless. There is some stuff about Alan being mistaken for a CIA agent that amounts to nothing. A scene where they hunt wolves that protect a flock of sheep that seems to neither trigger a change in Alan as a character nor represent some thematic or allegorical relevant to the characters or story we’re watching. Then, it’s over and they both come home. It is so inconsequential to the movie, despite feeling like the culmination of a major story arc, that if you read the Wikipedia synopsis of the movie, the events of the trip aren’t even mentioned.

Similarly, there is a whole micro arc about Alan’s brief affair with a Danish development executive, who is also there courting Saudi money. This relationship is also completely pointless. She sneaks him some alcohol in the otherwise liquorless Muslim country, they go to a wild party and sleep together, and then they break up, at least as much as anyone who doesn’t really have a relationship can break up. Like with Yousef, her piece of the story feels vestigial. She doesn’t seem to have a reason to be included. Her more debaucherous lifestyle doesn’t seduce Alan to make poor choices or act as a warning to put his life on a better track. Her existence doesn’t seem to be metaphorical in nature, either. She has, in a storytelling sense, no reason to be given so much screen time.

There is an interesting idea somewhere buried deep in the core of this movie, some kind of parable about the U.S. and world economy following the post-2009 market collapse. It massages around the edges of a lot of different concepts. It explores America’s shrinking manufacturing sector. Alan is a former executive at a bicycle manufacturing plant who, partly through his own cost cutting measures, out-sourced so much of the company’s business he made himself obsolete. Now, he is a panicked salesman whose only asset is the most tenuous of connections to the Saudi royal family. It explores the Great Recession and the global economic slowdown, both in the attitudes of the Western companies trying to make inroads in Saudi Arabia and in the attitudes of the Saudi’s themselves. There is something poignant in the representation of Saudi Arabia’s apparent opulence being a thin veneer in front of empty buildings and empty promises, as is most exemplified in the scene where Alan tours an apartment building, built on the whim of the royal family, where no one lives despite the beautiful units and amazing amenities.

Perhaps this is the closest the movie comes to a point, where these kinds of thematic ideas culminate in a multipart ending that suggests that there is something to be gained in not becoming a desperate rat in the rat race but seeking something simpler and more personally resonant to you than repeatedly prostrating yourself at the altar of Mammon. Not the most profoundly unique message of all time. Nor is it one the movie totally believes in, as while Alan decides there is reason to stay in Saudi Arabia and not return home, by the epilogue of the film he is in a relationship with a successful, professional woman and has taken a well paying local job himself.

All of these things, the aimlessness, the pointless absurdism, the vestigial story arcs, and the half-hearted parable, all probably feel hollow because this is a film and not a book. A book can show you the inner thoughts and feelings of characters, filling in gaps and bolstering thematic ideas in a way that films’ emphasis on visuals and dialogue can’t always imitate. A book’s prose can bring the allegorical parallels of Saudi Arabia and pre-crash America into starker relief, it can pack the empty space with the nonverbal communication that enriches relationships between characters, it can make the absurdism feel like it is going nowhere with purpose.

I don’t know if the book does these things, as I haven’t actually read it, but I know for a fact that the movie does not. And so, giving the benefit of the doubt to a piece of literature once nominated for a rather prestigious award, it is possible that the movie’s greatest failing is simply not being able to capture the magic of the book as well as the filmmakers believed they could. Either way, the movie is largely a slow moving, boring, empty, pointless chore that’s only redeeming virtue is Tom Hanks’ superhuman on screen charisma.

Would Recommend: If you just love Tom Hanks and want to see everything he’s been in.

Would Not Recommend: If you are hoping for a brilliant adaptation of the Dave Eggers novel.