Robert Zemeckis, director of such classic films as Back to the Future, Forrest Gump, Castaway, and The Polar Express, has returned to the silver screen with his latest movie, Here. With a core cast featuring long-time collaborators Tom Hanks and Robin Wright, both of whom starred in Forrest Gump, as well as newcomers Paul Bettany, Kelly Reily, and a number of others. Here, like much of Zemeckis’ previous work, is based around a central ‘gimmick;’ the entire movie is shot from a single perspective that doesn’t move. The story is presented nonlinearly and features multiple vignettes following the people who have lived in this space throughout history. Here is an ambitious movie with a rich central concept, but it ultimately falls slightly short of its potential.
After opening 65 million years ago with the asteroid impact that killed the dinosaurs, Here quickly rushes through the ensuing millennia, showing glimpses of the ice age, Native Americans hunting, European colonists settling the land, patriots fighting in the American Revolution, the house that the majority of the film takes place in being built, and a montage of all the house’s residents, before finally settling in 2024. From there, the movie moves freely across the timeline, showing the stories of the various families that have lived in the house, oftentimes showing multiple frames overlaid with the main action that show something happening in the same place at a different time. The structure is a little jarring at first, but the movie quickly settles into a comfortable groove, jumping from one story to the next like flipping back and forth across TV channels. Here never spends too long on any one story beat, and the pacing is consistently snappy throughout. The constantly changing scenery helps to make what might otherwise be a fairly boring story about a family in suburban America interesting and engaging.
However, the structure of the film has its drawbacks. For one, the movie spends a not insignificant amount of its scant runtime on vignettes that add very little to the main story. Admittedly, most of the segments are quite interesting and do a good job of breaking up the main narrative, but some of them feel unnecessary, serving little purpose besides taking screen time away from the story. Here simply is not long enough to justify so many ancillary plot threads, and the movie would almost certainly have benefited from an extra 30 minutes or so of runtime to make room for all these ideas.
Zemeckis is known for, among other things, his proclivity for using innovative technology in his films. He was one of the first directors to use motion capture effectively in The Polar Express, and he has used it in almost all of his movies since, including Here. Zemeckis leveraged motion capture alongside cutting-edge machine learning techniques to digitally de-age many of the actors for certain scenes. The results are surprising and impressive, if not always perfect.
Here is a charming, emotional ride through time. And while its ambitious concept introduces a number of minor hiccups, Zemeckis still leverages a rich emotional core, rock-solid cast, and unique structure to tell a novel and engaging story.
