Do you remember those Christmas commercials that show lovey-dovey things related to family, togetherness, and a sense of kawawag, and with the most glassy-eyed delivery, Only to be stopped after the huge picture that says ‘We are good right’? It’s nothing short of a competition where I don’t expect hope. Wictor. What an ad. I don’t know how This quote makes sense in context, but sure it does. I cannot describe it any other way. It’s Robert Zemeckis’s ‘Here’, a movie that should only be referred to as a 104-minute ad, as there is no plot to be found. As far as I’m aware, this movie is a celebration. Seriously. One needs to watch it. When you are fed stereotypes about taste so disgusting, tell me about it.
The movie in hand is based on Richard McGuire’s 2014 graphic novcan and focuses squarely on the concept of time. Specifically, the idea asks us to think outside of the box, to stay in one location, and to place the character in different time frames. All history talks in vivid color. From Benjamin Franklin’s son to the dinosaurs going extinct, the movie has it all.
As the century turns, we find ourselves in a duplex’s transitioning living room and are introduced to the couples living within its walls. This time around, it is the 1910s and we see John prevent his wife Michelle Dockery (Pauline Harter) from taking too many risks as he believes the plane in her life is of extreme importance. Interestingly, we are also familiar with the couple David Flynn and Ophelia Lovibond from the 1940s. Admittedly, they seem to be timid but contented as they work on one of the most remarkable advancements of their time.
For approximately sixty years and for which most of the movie proceeds, it seems as if both families are nearly equal in terms of time spent in their residences. The start was not much different, it has to be accepted that in this, Al Young (Paul Bettany) together with his spouse Rose (Kelly Reilly) was a few valid points ahead since he went out and purchased a home shortly after the end of World War 2 and came home with his sweetheart from war. There they settled down together, had three children, and so on.
One of those has dreams too, but when he gets up Richard (Tom Hanks) decides to see his high school sweetheart Margaret (Robin Wright) this pushes him too far they get married and he sells insurance to care for his family. As sorry as she was, they had to live together with Richard’s parents who were far from wealthy. Although they all sounded somewhat tough always moving out into the sunlight, over time Richard fully lost all braveness and even desire to jerk off. With time we were able to see Yanouks live through splendid moments of indelible events across the globe to the most mundane such as suicide, love, age parents, and more doing the same thing, always from the same place: the family looked around them.
With “Here,” Robert Zemeckis seeks to recreate the iconic characters and memorable scenes of “Forrest Gump” as Eric Roth, Alan Silvestri, and Don Burgess are also featured in the film, but unfortunately, it does not have a solid plot or a satirical tinge that makes up for its overwhelming nodes of emotionality. Although the only interesting aspect of the film was the couple from the 1940s, the cinematography, and their story were boring, as it did not have any of the actors’ themes. However, Zemeckis reincarnated several characters from his previous film, and with Eric Roth, Alan Silvestri, and Don Burgess setting in the scene, the chance of lightning striking again greatly increased.
These concerns, however, are not the most troubling things about this film, especially when the video segments featuring black families alongside native Americans that buy the house from the Young’s, come into the picture. They seem to suggest the film is going to touch the sadder more sacred issues of humanity but they seem to be present only for the guarantee of a not thoroughly white audience.
The formal idea and the visual conceit appear to have been Zemeckis’s main concern but I would argue that they do not come off particularly well. The idea of viewing the entirety of history from a single specific angle might be promising particularly in the pages of a graphic novel where the images are immobilized anyway, but it does not translate very well into the world of cinema relevant portions are offered in dreadfully blocked shots; and after a while, one begins to ask how many births, deaths, copulations, and dramatic realizations will happen in the same place where the Youngs set the table for Thanksgiving dinner.
Of even greater catastrophe is the use of the computerized technology of de-aging to change the age of various actors to what they are not (and in the end to what they are). The Australian filmmaker used it there very sparsely which is a plus, but it was much more controversial in that film. The location, on the other hand, is always there and it isn’t effective. Too often the actors appear to have a plastiscene veneer which is a distraction and Wight in particular suffers from this as it diminishes whatever the characters are attempting to convey emotion-wise.
What tends to happen with “Here” is that zeal is generated much like a hot air balloon has been leashed using a needle. There eventually comes a moment when one starts telling oneself that surely Zemeckis is yet to walk over the edge by infusing “Our House” into the mix. But then again here we are watching Zemeckis and his “Here”.
The “Allied” film he did demonstrates that Zemeckis is a gifted movie director and is quite able when truly invested. Still, though, he enjoys working on vanity projects such as this one, which I am told comes with the terrible privilege of cast members such as Hanks and Wright if his accent doesn’t prove to be distracting half of her lines bear the message that “time flies”, to make matters worse, both of them seem to share the characteristic of sharing an almost omnipresent sense of time with Zemeckis. Spoiler Alert! Believe it or not, and this is a film’s flaw from a structural point of view, yes, there is this one setting where the camera is operated, and that is it in this aspect, the gritty reality of this film stands in stark contrast to the fiction where almost all of us in the viewers’ seats were transported.
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