So much of the media plasma that surrounds us

is no more than product or titillation; mind numbing time killers or reinforcement of consensual reality. Most of these applications (whether in film, or music or television) are hyperreal, that is, more than real -- they are deliberate attempts to overload the neural centers they target, much as any addict will deliberately overload himself or herself to the point of overdose.

In addition, and more dangerously, most of it has no connection with reality, and any attempt to reenact the events portrayed in films into the real world inevitably results in tragedy. Sometimes, however, (whether by accident or because the artist knows his subject) something actual is captured. I can think of three movies specifically that did so.

Having spent some time in Southeast Asia, I know that no film has ever captured the feel of deep jungle, even closely; except one: Predator. When the insertion team rappels from the helicopter through the canopy of trees, their entry into the claustrophobic murk of the jungle floor is pictured to perfection. The immersiveness of it, the sense of breathing under water, of occupying alien territory, was perfectly conveyed by the cinematography of Predator. That, and the sense of confinement and menace. All that was missing was the overpowering stench-of birth and life, of bloom and death and rot. A startlingly effective sequence in a movie often overlooked because of its genre and its big budget star.

In another life, a misspent youth, I kicked in my share of doors with iron in my hands. In the movie Boogie Nights, after Mark Wahlberg's character has descended into the hell of cocaine addiction, he and his crime partner decide to rob a dealer. The entire sequence when they are in the dealer's pad, working up the nerve to rip him off, was so reminiscent of my events in my youth that I had an anxiety attack the first time I watched it; my wife and I had to leave the theater. No other scene and no other movie has ever conveyed the terror and the nihilistic meaninglessness of drug crime like Boogie Nights did. A 70s flashback all the way.

For reasons we won't delve into at this time, I spent awhile as a degenerate crackhead in Compton. The only movie that communicates the desperation and addictiveness of that lifestyle is Spike Lee's incredible Jungle Fever. When Wesley Snipes's character descends into the underworld of the crackhouse looking for his brother, the scene is utterly convincing, right down to the sediments of garbage on the floor, the denizens lined up against the wall hypnotized by their glass pipe mistresses, and Snipes actually becoming ill as he swims through (deliciously) toxic air. Crack is a drug of respiration, the inhalation/ ecstasy connection is even more pronounced than with pot.

Even now, after many years clean, I sometimes awake in mid breath, whooping up a big dreamland lungful. The way that Lee focused on the breathing of the crackheads really brought it home. Hard to believe this whole sequence was a side story to Jungle Fever. The whole concept of hyperreality is to replace the world, like a post-modern Disney overlay concealing the way things actually are. So perhaps it shouldn't be surprising when fiction sometimes actually reminds us of personal experience, and resonates with reality. Such accuracies increasingly seem like rays of sunlight shining through the cloud cover of the media constructs we've blinded ourselves with, reminding us of earlier times when we lived without the wholesale crutches of illusion we depend upon now.

Copyright © 1999 Michael Hansen