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The gimmick of Here is not the unmoving POV that makes the entire film something of a tableau of a single space across multiple time periods. That method of capturing the human experience is actually a potentially great idea, something of a variation of what David Lowery did beautifully with 2017’s A Ghost Story. There, a sheeted spirit is trapped in the space where he shared his life with his wife when he was alive and he’s given the ability to see that location across timeframes both past and present.
The actual gimmick of Here is reuniting much of the team that made Forrest Gump, one of director Robert Zemeckis’ most well-known and successful films. Included as part of this movie’s production are stars Tom Hanks and Robin Wright, writer Eric Roth (who co-wrote Here with Zemeckis), cinematographer Don Burgess, production designer Rick Carter, and composer Alan Silvestri. It’s great information for a night of trivia, but in term of the artistic merit of the final product, none of that carries much weight.
Based on the celebrated 2014 graphic novel by Richard McGuire, Here gives us glimpses of people or creatures who lived or otherwise occupied this same location, going all the way back to when dinosaurs roamed the earth. We can spot Native Americans occasionally, and get a glimpse of Benjamin Franklin who apparently owned the house across the street (and whose estranged son lived in the house we’re in most of the time). The film doesn’t move chronologically; it jumps back and forth through the centuries to underscore the understanding that many of these humans experienced, to varying degrees, the same joys, trials, and tribulations as each other.
We watch love, death, meals, and heartbreak all happen through the ages, which Zemeckis unveils through a series of frames within the frame (it’s difficult to explain, but when you see it, it’s not tough to follow). Special-effect de-aging technology is used to make some characters seem older or younger than they are, especially Hanks and Wright, and the results may vary.
Here works best when it settles into its characters rather than always looking for an excuse to jump from time period to time period. We see Hanks’ and Wright’s characters Richard and Margaret from when they are kids to quite elderly. Those are the characters we inevitably care the most about because we spend the most time with them, as well as Richard’s parents—Paul Bettany’s Al and Kelly Reilly’s Rose, who lived in the house before their son. To be clear, if an event didn’t take place in the living room of the house (the camera is essentially located in the dining room, which we never see), we don’t see it. We’re only getting a fraction of these lives, and sometimes that isn’t enough for us to really care what the characters experience.
We spend a little time in the 1910s, with John (Gwilym Lee), who seems to be on the verge of inventing the airplane. His wife Pauline (Michelle Dockery) is convinced he’s going to die testing it out, which makes his actual cause of death all the funnier. When we experience the 1940s, another inventor (David Flynn), who lives with his wife (Ophelia Lovibond), ends up developing something extraordinary as well. The most modern timeline belongs to a Black family whose inclusion in this story feels uncomfortably obligatory, because we get to know almost nothing about their backstory or any major events in their lives while in the house.
While jumping around from era to era is meant to imply a shared human condition and experience, the actual result is something that made me feel less connected to others. While Here is certainly better than the filmmaker’s other recent efforts, like Welcome to Marwen, The Witches, and the live-action Pinocchio, it still seems weirdly stilted and without any of the magic or pathos of some of his previous works. The dialogue doesn’t seem in any way exceptional or enlightening, and just because you might spot a hidden message or tone in the film doesn’t mean it’s actually any good. To be clear, this was a film I was very much looking forward to seeing, so I guess we’d have to chalk this up as one of my biggest disappointments of the year.
The film is now playing in theaters.
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