Ein Hologramm für den König

“And you may find yourself in a beautiful house, with a beautiful wife. And you may ask yourself, well, how did I get here?” Alan Clay has nightmares. In one, he has these lines from a Talking Heads’ song on his lips as he walks through a world in which supposed status symbols are all going up in clouds of smoke: house, car and wife – they all just go poof. Businessman Clay has been sent to Saudi Arabia for an IT deal but ends up vacillating between self-confidence and despair. In a tent in the middle of the desert, a bevy of employees await his arrival. And that of the king. The non-appearance of his Saudi Arabian majesty, to whom Clay is supposed to present a holographic telephone system, makes him feel like a character from the play “Waiting for Godot”. On top of everything else, he discovers a cyst growing on his back that has to be examined by a beautiful female doctor ...
Starring a wholly committed Tom Hanks, Tom Tykwer’s tragicomic film is a swansong to a man-made, artificial world. Frank Kruse’s multifaceted and imaginative sound design received a German Film Award.