The Plot: A long time ago, an unassuming house was built opposite a fancy 18th Century colonial house. Inside that house was a living room. Inside that living room lived various people through multiple generations across decades of time. These include Richard (Tom Hanks) and his wife Margaret (Robin Wright), who live with Richard’s parents Al (Paul Bettany) and Rose (Kelly Reilly). As time passes, so does their story pass on to those that follow. This is their story…
The Verdict: When filmmakers reach a certain age, some of them keep making films that are as strong as their glory days. Clint Eastwood is a recent example with the fine Juror #2. Others become more reflective and pursue something that might be perceived as sentimental, but continue to pursue their own agenda in pushing technology to its limits to see what it can do. Robert Zemeckis has always been one to play around with technology, from that extraordinary opening shot of Contact to getting Tom Hanks to shake hands with President John F. Kennedy and further beyond with his 3D epic Beowulf. His latest film Here is another of his cinematic experiments in using modern technology and filmmaking tricks as a storytelling device, relating a time-spanning depiction of life in all its crazy, messy, wonderful glory.
The high concept here is a single location, with the camera fixed in one place and one static shot. With a nod to the 1960 version of H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine, it follows the idea that time changes space. It starts with the dinosaurs dying out, then moves forward millions of years to Native Americans in a forest, then a house being built and the view from inside the living room of that house where various people live. It’s based on a comic strip by Richard McGuire that was later developed into a graphic novel. It’s an interesting idea for a film, given that it could very easily lapse into a stagey theatre piece. Zemeckis keeps the film entirely cinematic though, using lightning strikes and flashes of light to morph between scenes or more obviously boxes that appear on screen from a different time period and then melt into the bigger picture. There’s also liberal use of de-aging techniques on the actors, bringing Tom Hanks back to his Splash-era self for a while. It very nearly convinces, though noticeably the deeper voices haven’t been de-aged in turn.
The film requires something of a buy-in to the concept and to just go with the flow and see what happens to the characters. Cynics might scoff at it but there’s a very human story at its core though, about time passing and how one place can store so many memories. As life is made up of memories, then they are fragments and that’s the approach that Zemeckis takes here. While his camera doesn’t move, his characters do as they go through various stages of life. The living room becomes a place where there are births, marriages and deaths as well as festive celebrations. The main story of one family is an involving one, but Zemeckis feels the need to flit back and forth to mild digressions in other time periods that don’t add a whole lot to the film. As if aware of possibly short attention spans, his film is constantly moving through time so that it becomes like a time-lapse window with the camera acting as that window. Some occasional slowing down might not have gone amiss here.
For what is essentially a story of human life in miniature, there’s an ever-present artificiality to Here that the film never quite shakes off. It’s a cinematic experiment that sometimes rings hollow and looks unconvincing (check out the dummy corpse in a funeral procession), while other times it scores a genuine moment of character depth that hits you straight in the feels. Zemeckis just about holds all this together, even when the seams are apparent. Here is very much a case of Zemeckis going back to the past rather than the future and it’s not without its own fragmentary moments of joy and humour. It’s got entertainment value that works well in the cinema, if somewhat of a novelty one and therefore warrants a light recommendation.
Rating: 3 / 5
Review by Gareth O’Connor


In short: Back to the past
Directed by Robert Zemeckis.
Starring Tom Hanks, Robin Wright, Paul Bettany, Kelly Reilly.