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By John Demetry
Bacon's claim to be "No one" echoes Odysseus' hubris when he tells the cyclops that his name is "No man" before blinding him. The pretensions of being beyond mortal seals Bacon's fate, just as it did Odysseus'. A master stroke, director Paul Verhoeven presents this brutality via an infra-red monitor so that we can "see" both Bacon and the dog. Despite his invisibility, Bacon's still flesh-and-blood. Hollow Man is a terrifyingly visceral film experience. Bacon plays a scientist who creates an invisibility serum with Pentagon funding. It's clear from the outset that he's doing it for himself, an extension of his cock-pride as much as his sports-car speeding. When he and another scientist (Josh Brolin), rivals for the bed of colleague Elisabeth Shue, make bets on who will take down a rampaging invisible guerilla, it's a pissing contest writ large with Verhoeven's unmatched use of digital effects.
Invisibility brings out his infantalism. He shrieks at Brolin, "You have no life!"--the verbal wit of a junior high brat. He lacks the imagination to use his invisibility for anything other than fondling breasts, raping a woman, and murderously erasing traces of his research. He's acting out against his impotence--this genius can't figure out how to reverse the invisibility. His hollowness has finally consumed him. At the end, Brolin exclaims, "My God." To which Shue replies, "He's not. Not anymore." Verhoeven slyly shows us how Bacon intimidates Brolin, making him feel like less of a man. Every time Brolin and Shue begin to have sex in the film, Bacon interferes first as a thought, then as an invisible observer. Shue's character is callous in her greed, justifying Brolin's insecurity. I'm still shaking after the final, heart-racing showdown in which Brolin and Shue confront the invisible tremors in their relationship.
Kim Dickens, Josh Brolin, Elisabeth Shue star in Hollow Man
Verhoeven's signature style intermingles his fascination with anatomy, his vibrant aestheticizing of violence, and his satirical impulses. As in the fascinating, underrated Showgirls and Starship Troopers, he displays a moral and visceral bombast. However, this film is more of a piece than those were. He finds the conflicts within the material rather than between the style and the text. Here, his oversized camera movements, surgical precision ediitng, and beautiful-repugnant visual effects have a fetishized, sports-car sheen. The material allows him to directly plug into the zeitgeist concern of modern white, het masculinity. Unlike the vile, dog-sucking-its-own-cock post-modernism of Fight Club, Hollow Man recognizes that modern man's oppression is not from an erasure of masculine power, but from its utter cultural omnipresence. Verhoeven takes us to the hollow core of our society's sexual power structures. Fasten your seatbelt. He speeds the whole way. |
"No one's gonna hurt you, no one," an invisible Kevin Bacon comforts a surly
dog. He proceeds to smash the dog against the inside of its laboratory cage.
The dog had the nerve to disturb Bacon's delusions of grandeur with its
barking. Don't piss off a God.
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