Film Review: Here

 

Sexuality/Nudity Mature

Violence Acceptable

Vulgarity Mature

Anti-Catholic Philosophy Mature

This is one of those movies where the filmmakers have a really original idea but its success can only be found in the execution.

Here is a movie where the main conceit is that the entire film takes place in one location with one single camera angle.  Throughout the movie, we see several events that happen in this location over time, starting with the destruction of the dinosaurs through the ice age until we get to humanity.  Most of the movie takes place inside this one specific angle looking at the living room of a house built in the early 1900's.  As we hop around in time, we spend most of our time with the Young family.  Their story here begins after WWII.  Al (Paul Bettany) returns from the war and purchases this too-expensive house with his wife Rose (Kelly Reily).  However, post war life is stressful for Al and success seems to elude him as he turns to alcohol for relief.  In this environment, they raise three children, one of whom is the artistic Richard (Tom Hanks) who falls in love with law student Margaret (Robin Wright).  Their whirlwind romance leads to a hasty marriage and both of them feel like they have to constantly make sacrifices while living in Richard's childhood home with his parents.  As the years go by, life catches up with them very quickly.

There are other families that we encounter, but honestly, they feel like distractions from the main story with the Youngs.  This is also one of the weaknesses of the story: there doesn't seem to be enough narrative of the Youngs to fill up an entire movie so it feels padded with unrelated and less consequential stories.  For example, the owner is a man named John Harter (Gwilym Lee). who is obsessed with flying airplanes.  This storyline spends so much time on this idea but it never pays off in a significant way.  There is something to be said about how so many different types of lives can take place in the same location over time.  But their lack of connection makes the time jumps more jarring.  Whenever we left the Young family, it felt like going to a commercial break until the story started up again.

One of the things that struck me was that despite having a stellar cast, the performances were generally very poor.  This is especially the case with Bettany, but everyone seems to be going just a little too over-the-top and giving performances that lack the realism that this movie needs.  I found this very odd considering the fact that most of the actors are skilled veterans.  My guess would be that because the camera never moves, so much of the movie lacks close-ups.  As a result the actors resorted to more theatrical performances, where they played their words and actions bigger as if they were on stage.  Unfortunately, this does not translate onto film.

The other big problem that the movie has is that there is no one to root for.  Al is a jerk for most of the film and feels very one-dimensional.  Richard is snarky and full of resentment because he had to give up his artistic dreams to get a job and provide for his family.  But even before this, he was a self-centered snot.  In one scene the roof begins to leak and instead of helping his father, he stands away from him sketching his torment as he tries to fix the room.  But the worst is Margaret.  Not only is she also resentful for having left school to raise her family, she is someone with no appreciation for all of the good things in her life.  She does not appreciate that Richard gave up on his dreams for her.  She constantly complains about the fact that they have to live with her in-laws rent-free for decades.  And at one point in the movie, she finds out that she and Richard are going to be given that house for free.  Her response is so awful, I had trouble understanding it.  Later when she starts going through her mid-life crisis, all she can do is focus on herself.  Richard throws her a surprise 50th birthday party.  When it comes time to blow out her candles, she goes on a rant about how she hasn't gotten what she wanted out of life.  I could not help but feel the utter humiliation that she puts Richard through in front of all their friends and family, but she is completely oblivious.  This feels like what would have happened if Jenny had lived long enough to make married life with Forrest miserable.

As I said, the concept was interesting enough to want me to see how it ended.  The movie wants to say something about ordinary life.  The great play Our Town presents the reader with a vision of the beauty of our daily lives.  Here tries to do the same, but the characters are so bitter and resentful that it fills the audience more with frustration than wonder.  But I admire the fact that they are trying to help us understand that so much of our lives, so many of the moments that matter, take place in our simple, ordinary homes.  But the writing never lives up to this premise.  It feels very shallow and flat.  At one point we see an officer tell continental soldiers that the Revolutionary War is over.  The response of one soldier is "Now what?"  This felt more like some kind of commentary about modern wars and felt very alien to how people of the day would speak.  The dialogue often feels forced and expository.  At one point, for no real reason, Al tells his teenage son that he cheated on their mother.  It seems so forced and artificial.  Instead of elevating ordinary life, it seems to drag it through the mud.

The other thing that keeps this film from being a total disaster is that director Robert Zemeckis is still a master of the craft.  It is an incredible directing challenge to be locked in to a single camera angle.  One of the main principles of cinematography is that you have to keep the image in motion.  The way that he does the transitions from timeline to timeline forces your eyes to dart around the screen in a way that gives the scene a dynamism without any camera movement.  The production design is also fantastic so that every era feels very distinct and authentic to when it moves through time, you are very quickly able to orient yourself as to which timeline you are in.  MILD SPOILER AHEAD, SKIP PARAGRAPH IF YOU DON'T WISH TO READ IT.  And at the very end of the movie, Zemeckis begins to slowly move the camera forward.  This simple motion actually almost made me gasp.  Zemeckis understood that by keeping the camera so still, any motion would result in maximum emotional effect.

I went to the theater to see a story that would make me see the profound depths of ordinary life.  But I did not find it in Here.