I love Oscar Bait Season! This little time period between mid-October and Christmas always sees a wide variety of “Prestige Films” meant to grab the attention of voters who will be screening movies and handing out trophies during awards season next year. The buzz in advance of Here was priming audiences to and voters to put the film on their Best Of list, focusing on the reunion of Tom Hanks (who plays Richard), Robin Wright (Margaret), and director Robert Zemeckis for the first time since Forrest Gump thirty years ago.
Y’all. I don’t think I have ever been more disappointed in a film released during Oscar Bait Season. Here simply goes nowhere at all, both literally and physically.
Robert Zemeckis loves time and exploring the passage of time, either as a plot device or as a feature of the narrative where we see characters at different points in their lives. From Back to the Future to Forest Gump to Cast Away, Zemeckis has proved himself to be quite adept with handling expansive swaths of time within the constraints of a two-hour film. Even with Death Becomes Her (my favorite Zemeckis), we don’t see time as a central character, but we do see a film predicated upon the passage of time and how its main characters seek to stop it. With Here, Zemeckis is tackling his most ambitious exploration of time, from the age of the dinosaurs through modern day Pennsylvania. The movie shows the lives of various characters from one position and all of the events that took place in this one location. Our field of vision is restricted to a an area of about 100 square feet for the entirety of the movie. When I say it doesn’t go anywhere physically, I mean that. The camera does not move.
It makes for an interesting, though not necessarily enjoyable, movie experience. Seeing the interplay of different eras is interesting at the outset, but the same transitions between time periods over and over and over becomes repetitive. There’s one scene where we see more of the house through a cleverly placed mirror — more of that and I wouldn’t have had to fight yawns for the entirety of the movie.
This would be a relatively minor issue if the overall narrative was more interesting. It feels like Zemeckis wants to show the banality of life over time and how all of these unimportant, uninspired, uninteresting moments combine to create the sum of our existence, and there is some power in that. The small moments, the private conversations — you can build something here. There’s a conversation between a high-school aged Margaret and her future mother-in-law about the dreams of women who weren’t allowed to chase them. A realtor and housewife discuss the effects of World War II on their respective families. Even the Very Special Episode segment of the movie’s requisite Black Family giving a police talk to their teenaged son felt like another small window into the daily lives of Americans.
But, if you want to present that movie, stand ten toes down on it. Stay in the boring, build the tension there, and make us care more about the smallness of their lives. We don’t need to see a random subplot with the invention of a ubiquitous piece of American iconography (which is curiously invented in the wrong city, in the wrong year, by the wrong person, so why even shoehorn it into the movie?) or Benjamin Franklin’s familial dynamics prior to the American Revolution when 90% of the film is about a middle-class white couple living their boring lives in a poorly decorated living room. Either be boring or don’t. Every flash of a storyline from an era outside of the main narrative was far more interesting than the characters we were supposed to be invested in for 90 minutes.
Because of the chaotic nature of the timeline, the repetitive transitions, and the static camera angle, we don’t even have the benefit of powerful performances to say “well, at least we got to see some good acting.” The CGI that de-ages Robin Wright and Tom Hanks only serves to magnify Tom’s speaking style in such a way that I could not focus on anything he said because he doesn’t open his mouth when he talks. We knew this already. But seeing it on the uncanny valley of an 18-year-old Hanks is just so uncomfortable! There are monologues and conversations so close to that camera that make you feel like you’re watching a high school play. Every person involved in every scene of the American Revolution flashbacks, from the writers to the costumers to the actors themselves, should find the nearest musket immediately and shoot up any piece of the script they still have in their possession.
Because I disliked the movie so much (and because so many others did too — it has a 35% on Rotten Tomatoes right now), I went to seek out positive reviews so I could find out whether I’d be able to relate to any of the good things people were able to pull out of Here. Some said it was heartwarming. Some said it would be a constant repeat on the Hallmark Channel or TNT. Some said the chemistry between Wright and Hanks was just so good, they would have enjoyed any movie with those two stars.
And my conclusion is: no, I cannot relate. I love Lifetime movies, Holiday classics, a Hallmark marathon, etc. I love maudlin schlock. I loooove when a movie is so touching that I well up in tears and want to go do a good deed for somebody. None of that applies to Here. My only takeaway is that, for the on hour and forty-four minutes it took to finish Here, I was regretting that purchase and wishing I’d been anywhere else.
Score: 2/10
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