Susan Granger’s review of “Here” (Sony/TriStar/Miramax)
Robert Zemeckis is a courageous, innovative filmmaker. Never resting on his “Forrest Gump,” “Back to the Future,” “Cast Away” laurels, he’s obsessed with technology and its countless possibilities.
With the camera firmly fixed on a wide-angle vantage point, his newest film – “Here” – traces one particular living space through the prism of time. Set on a New England plot of land, Zemeckis’ visual perspective never changes while everything around it does.
Beginning before recorded time, Indigenous people lived there. Then came the settlers, including Benjamin Franklin’s estranged son who built a huge colonial manor across the street.
Constructed in 1902, Pauline (Michelle Dockery) first lived in the house with her aviation-obsessed husband John (Gwilyn Lee), followed by ‘reclining chair’ inventor Leo (David Flynn) and his wife Stella (Ophelia Lovibond) in the 1930s.
In 1945 – shortly after W.W.II – the two-story house was purchased for $3,400 by Army veteran Al Young (Paul Bettany) and his wife Rose (Kelly Reilly), who raised three children there.
When their son, aspiring artist Richard (Tom Hanks), impregnates his high-school sweetheart Margaret (Robin Wright), he puts his dreams aside, taking a mundane job and raising their daughter (Zsa Zsa Zemeckis). Because finances are tight, they move in with Al & Rose, although Margaret always yearns for a home of her own.
Years pass. There are weddings, births, deaths and break-ups, accompanied by suffering, soul-searching, sentimentality and a steep climb in real-estate value.
To transition between time periods, Zemeckis cleverly uses pop-up windows, evoking crucial pop culture moments (like when the Beatles appeared on Ed Sullivan’s TV show), and delves into A.I’s digital de-aging process.
Adapted from the 2014 conceptual graphic novel by Richard McGuire, it’s episodically scripted by Zemeckis’ “Forrest Gump” collaborator Eric Roth as a cinematically ambitious, non-linear, intergenerational meditation on mortality.
Only the inclusion of a ‘cautionary’ vignette featuring a contemporary Black family (Nikki Amuka-Bird, Nicholas Pinnock, Cache Vanderpuye) – who buy the house for $1 million in 2015 after the Youngs vacate – seems oddly jarring.
On the Granger Gauge of 1 to 10, “Here” is a stationary, static, yet solid 7, playing in theaters.
