Here, 2024.
Directed by Robert Zemeckis
Starring Tom Hanks, Robin Wright, Paul Bettany, Kelly Reilly, Michelle Dockery, Gwilym Lee, Ophelia Lovibond, David Fynn, Leslie Zemeckis, Jonathan Aris, Albie Salter, Lilly Aspell, Lauren McQueen, Billie Gadsdon, Harry Marcus, Ben Wiggins, Joel Oulette, Dannie McCallum, Nikki Amuka-Bird, Mohammed George, Dexter Sol Ansell, Zsa Zsa Zemeckis, Cache Vanderpuye, Anya Marco Harris, Tony Way, Jemima Rooper, Nicholas Pinnock, Keith Bartlett, and Daniel Betts.
SYNOPSIS:
A generational story about families and the special place they inhabit, sharing in love, loss, laughter, and life.
Robert Zemeckis has been prioritising technology over telling a story for a while. The last time he made what you’d call a traditional movie was middle-of-the road war flick Allied, in which the filmmaker’s boredom was evident for all to see in the finished film. Since then, he has re-skinned The Witches and polished up Pinocchio for the soulless Disney+ reimagining. He is an innovator who has always been at his best when using advancements in cinema to aid the narrative; Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, Forest Gump, and Contact.
Here he is at it again, employing the gimmick of a single camera POV as life on one patch of land unfolds over the course of billions of years. The viewfinder takes in the dinosaurs and their demise, the Revolutionary War, the swinging sixties, right up until the global pandemic, and shifts into focus whenever we’re afforded time with the rollcall of inhabitants, most of which is spent in the living room life of Tom Hanks’ Richard and Robin Wright’s Margaret.
It’s a tapestry upon which children are born, people die, and everything else about life is painted in-between; weddings, Thanksgiving, even getting to first base. The film is a series of landmark events that can’t help but trigger an emotional response in the viewer. It’s like flicking through a photo album, or one of those “looking back on” slideshows that your phone occasionally assembles for you. The only problem is that the film is eliciting a response relating to the viewers story, rather than any of the two-dimensional characters presented onscreen.
Aside from the Gump reunion headline act, we get Paul Bettany as the family’s alcoholic patriarch, who is bitter about how his life turned out, but is too arch and theatrical for you to care, while Kelly Reilly doesn’t fare much better as his wife, vanishing into the background, perhaps emblematic of the women of the time, but it still makes little impact. Gwilym Lee and Michelle Dockery are the house’s first inhabitants, with their aviation-era relationship stilted and ultimately inconsequential, while the final family to occupy the room are the focus of a telegraphed, and rather clunky modern tragedy.
So, it’s down to Hanks and Wright to be our emotional anchors as Zemeckis skips through time, and much in the same way Here relies upon audience projection for the sentimental beats to land, the duo only succeed because of our familiarity with them as performers. The material isn’t really a stretch for them, and as such it feels as though their talents are a little wasted, but there is a comfort in spending time in their company and watching them grow old, so much so that when it switches to any of the peripheral characters, you long for the viewfinder to return to their tale.
And what of the gimmick? Well, once the initial intrigue of it has quickly worn off, you’re essentially left with what is a CGI embellished stage play, and not a particularly interesting one at that. Admittedly the film looks quite good, and barring a couple of up close moments the de-ageing effect is put to good use, but it is a bit weird to hear the adult voice of Tom Hanks coming from the mouth of a teenager.
Here is a cinematic time-capsule that can often feel as long as the billions of years it’s covering, which despite the best efforts of Hanks and Wright soon has you wishing that the Dino-killing meteor that hits the Earth during the film’s opening sequence had just landed on the camera instead.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film ★ ★ / Movie ★ ★
Matt Rodgers – Follow me on Twitter
