The digital technology just isn’t there yet. Or Here, as the case may be. But given the conceit of the movie, I’m not sure special effects are what it needed anyway.
Another attempt at cinematic invention from director Robert Zemeckis, Here takes place entirely within the family room of an average American home over the course of many eras. From a fixed camera position, which allows us to also see out of the house’s front window, we watch various families and residents come and go over the years. Mostly, the camera’s attention returns, in non-chronological order, to the lives of Richard (Tom Hanks) and Margaret (Robin Wright). Richard was born in the home not long after World War II and eventually raises his own family there, along with Margaret, in the ensuing years. Both aging and de-aging effects were employed to allow the actors to play these characters across decades.
Over the decades of his own career, Zemeckis’ technological experiments have ranged from the spectacular (Forrest Gump, Who Framed Roger Rabbit) to the passable (Pinocchio) to the unfortunate (Beowulf, The Polar Express). Here falls in the latter category. The aging isn’t convincing in either direction (the process involved AI interpretations of the actors’ expressions and movements), but it’s the space itself that’s the ultimate problem. Not for a second did I believe that this house, let alone this particular room, actually existed. Reportedly, two sets were built for the production, with an LED wall behind the “window” to provide lighting and background imagery. Nevertheless, the entire space feels flat, filtered, unreal—a fatal flaw for a film about the metaphysical weight that a real space can hold.
There are moments, to be fair, where technology and conceit work together. As transitions, panels occasionally appear on the screen (as they did on the page in the Richard McGuire graphic novel on which the movie is based). These metaphysical windows allow a peek into the past or the future, moments that took place/will take place in that exact spot in the room. Meanwhile, the rest of the screen holds in the “present” for a few beats, before giving way to the era we see within the panel. Sometimes this works in the opposite direction, as when a square panel appears around the television set, on which the Beatles are performing “All My Loving,” while the rest of the screen dissolves to Richard and Margaret getting married by the fireplace a few years later. Essentially, the couple is serenaded by the band from another point in time. Later, a more poignant convergence of literal time frames occurs when an aged widower senses the presence of his late wife—whom we see in a panel, decades younger, in the same space but at a different time. Unfortunately, such sequences are few and far between, with perfunctory filler and hokey historical jokes taking up most of the running time (a recurring Benjamin Franklin gag is particularly cringeworthy).
As far as the performances are concerned, Wright is the only one who manages to deliver something human amidst the artificiality (also working in her favor is that Margaret—who is stuck living with Richard and his parents for decades despite pleas that they find their own space—is the most sympathetic). The rest of the cast—even Hanks, as well as Paul Bettany and Kelly Reilly as Richard’s parents—give the sort of broad, declamatory turns you might find in a workplace training video. If anything, that’s the sort of space that Here conjures most: not domestic familiarity, but corporate sterility. There’s a beating heart to the film, but it’s faint.
(11/5/2024)
