‘Here’ Keeps Tom Hanks and Robin Wright in One Room for a Time-Spanning Cinematic Experiment 

Alci Rengifo

Time certainly flies in Robert Zemeckis’ “Here.” This is one of those films where the experiment of its structure counts for more than the story. For decades this director has been associated with technological leaps, initiating techniques used later on by everyone else. The very idea of this movie is intriguing enough. A place can have the energy of the lives experienced within it. Some families inhabit the same home for generations. “Here” pretends to chart not so much the lives of its characters, but of a certain space in a house. Imagine if we could be eyewitnesses standing in that one corner. If only the script made it all more engaging.

Zemeckis teams back up with writer Eric Roth to adapt a 2014 graphic novel by Richard McGuire. The narrative begins in prehistory with dinosaurs rushing into view before an asteroid ends their reign. Millenniums pass and by the 18th century, the landscape now has the home of Benjamin Franklin’s estranged son during the American Revolution. Time then intercuts within the room of a house built on this spot. In 1910, John (Gwilym Lee) makes his wife Pauline (Michelle Dockery) nervous by obsessing over his new toy, an airplane. During the 1940s, a quirky couple, Lee Beekman (David Fynn) and Stella (Ophelia Lovibond) fool around as Lee invents the Lazy Boy chair. The main focus is on a family that begins after World War II with Al Young (Paul Bettany), a soldier returning from the war, and his wife Rose (Kelly Reilly). They have three children, one of whom is Richard (Tom Hanks), who at 18 gets his girlfriend Margaret (Robin Wright) pregnant.

The idea Zemeckis is attempting is one of those bold feats like Alexander Sokurov’s “Russian Ark,” where lots of history is captured in one place. A key difference is that Zemeckis creates the illusion that the camera never moves. Transitions occur with squares or fade outs that cross over between eras. That in itself is intriguing enough though not surprising for Zemeckis. He has always been at the forefront of technological advances in film. His long roster of classics, including “Back to the Future,” “Forrest Gump,” and “Who Framed Roger Rabbit” are as known for their effects as for their stories. His animated works, like “The Polar Express” and “Beowulf,” are also impressive. Yet, even a good director can be overtaken by their obsession with innovation. 

The visual inventiveness of “Here” eventually can’t mask what becomes a rather bland story with imbalanced sections. The script by Roth, who wrote “Forrest Gump,” amounts to spending decades watching an archetypical white American family endure suburban stress, intercut with people in the 1770s speaking like characters in an elementary school educational video. A running plot thread is how the Young family passes down their sense of unfulfilled potential. Al kept getting passed over at the company where he worked. Rose lost her best years as a dutiful 1950s housewife. Richard was a born painter who put it aside to sell insurance in order to provide for his family. Much of the writing feels like fantasies from a bygone country. Margaret eventually grows tired of living in a house with her in-laws, demanding to get a job so she and Richard can buy their own home. 

Real life is itself somewhat bland if you consider every waking minute. The challenge of good drama is to find what’s compelling about the human experience. Some of “Here” has that with Margaret giving birth in the room or Al briefly telling a young Richard about a long ago fling. The rest becomes a parade of cliché, ham-fisted moments. This room is where everything goes on from teens making out on the couch to Thanksgiving dinners where Richard’s brother announces he enlisted to go fight in Vietnam. Another issue is how the Young saga fights for space with other moments that seem tacked on for the sake of playing with the timeline. Benjamin Franklin visiting his son is not made all that interesting. The Lazy Boy story is cute and quick. Roth’s writing oddly underserves its non-white characters as well. A Native American couple in pre-colonial America falls in love, has a baby and the wife dies in what feels like three quick intervals. A Black family that eventually become the final owners of the home are written as shaky woke stereotypes. We learn little about them and their one extended scene has the dad (Nicholas Pinnock) explaining to his son how to deal with a traffic stop. The only Latin character is a house cleaner who has one Spanish line and drops dead. 

Much hype will revolve around how “Here” marks the reunion of Hanks and Wright with their “Forrest Gump” director, but the nature of their roles also suffers from the bizarre use of de-aging digital effects. By insisting on having the actors be the young and older versions of their characters for the entire movie, the director leaves them trapped in plasticine faces. Emotions don’t come across as strongly. Hanks may seem to have his face from “Big” back, but his body clearly moves and walks like a man over 60. Wright in particular never looks like a teenage girlfriend and later bored, angry young housewife. Paul Bettany and Kelly Reilly suffer the least, maybe because they don’t require as much digital makeup. Because these are all very talented artists, they can still bring compelling moments. Some of the truly touching scenes don’t involve drama, just something as lovable as Richard’s young daughter running around in her ghost costume. 

“Here” is not off on its main idea. After certain milestones, when one looks back, lives can feel like a blink in time. We carry regrets and so many “what if” questions, some marked by the places where we have lived. Despite the music by Alan Silvestri, clearly designed to pull at the heart strings, or Don Burgess’ restrained cinematography, which isn’t allowed to do too much, the nuggets of this story still work in flashes of what could have been a more stirring film. The irony is that, as with many of his other innovative works, others will surely grab the baton from Zemeckis and work further with this concept. “Here” has one shot where the camera finally moves, giving us a glimpse of the wider world of its house. Staying inside may not prove so compelling in this movie, but it will surely plant bigger ideas in future filmmakers who end up walking inside. 

“Here” releases Nov. 1 in theaters nationwide.