Here

Spoilers

2024's HERE has a premise mirroring a fascination I've had for many years.  Who was here before me? Right here. "Here" as in the coordinates I occupy at this moment.  Within a house, apartment, place of work.   A million stories I will never know.  Laughter, tears, boredom.  People I will likely never meet, having all manner of life moments, long before I darkened the door.  The older the place, the more intriguing it would be. 

I've had numerous experiences where I returned to an old haunt, now repurposed.  Maybe you've read about them on this blog.  I occasionally have breakfast at a diner in the suite that once housed a pharmacy I worked in.   I always sit at the counter and gaze back at the kitchen.  That is where I stood for many years, filling scripts.  Getting yelled at.  Having a gun pointed at me.  The same space now filled with folks who are oblivious to its history.

Director Robert Zemeckis considers this notion all the way back to the Jurassic period or so.  His camera will remain fixed onto a particular plot of space across which the Ice Age will play out.  Then the arrival of Native Americans.  Continuing into the 18th century with William Franklin, son of Ben.  In 1900, a house is built.  In its living room will pass couples and families into the 2020s.   Some of these folks like John Harter (Gwilym Lee) and his wife Pauline (Michelle Dockery), the first inhabitants, are barely seen.  When Pauline and her daughter exit the house one final time, the intended emotional impact is absent. 

There are also Leo (David Fynn) and Stella (Ophelia Lovibond) Beekman.  He will invent the La-Z-Boy recliner.  She was a pin up model.  Their scenes are easily the most playful in the film, until the day Leo collapses in the living room during he and his wife's visit with the new owners, Al (Paul Bettany) and Rose (Kelly Reilly).  Most of HERE will follow them and their family.  Most notably their son Richard (Tom Hanks) and daughter-in-law Margaret (Robin Wright), who will eventually inherit the house.

After them, sometime in the 21st century, Devon Harris (Nicholas Pinnock) and his wife Helen (Nikki Amuka-Bird), son Justin (Cache Vanderpuye) and housekeeper Raquel (Anya Marco Harris) will move in.

A lot happens.  Much will be relatable to anyone who's been married.  Some things may hit very close.  Like sacrifices, the kind ruminated over and regretted later in life.  Perhaps the catalyst for a split.  Folks get older.  Some will become lost in dementia.  Someone who once told witty jokes, later reduced to clutching a teddy bear and staring into space.  Heartbreaking.

Zemeckis co-wrote the screenplay - which is based on a graphic novel by Richard McGuire - with Eric Roth.  A reteaming thirty years after FORREST GUMP, in which Hanks and Wright also starred.   This film is clearly an attempt to recapture that magic.  It comes in spells.  Individual moments are golden.  The emotions are real.   Designed to make the audience tear up.  It worked on me, especially toward the end.  Even the shamelessly manipulative moments, set to Alan Silvestri's (who's worked with the director for over forty years) score. 

The central conceit - the camera never pans, tilts, or zooms  away from that one spot (at least until the last few minutes) - did not wear thin.  We mainly see that living room, where a wedding, a funeral, a birth, arguments, seductions, TV watching, and everything you'd expect to happen there plays out.  I was fascinated.  If only for how the decor changes over time.  

The de-aging technology was mostly pretty good.  Ditto for the performances (especially Bettany), though Wright ran hot and cold for me.  Sometimes she was on point, other times seemed as if still in rehearsals, trying out line readings. 

HERE has some aggressive time jumping from scene to scene, a debit.  Some scenes are only a minute long.  The players from early history aren't given enough time to get to us.  The Harris family also get shafted.  There are enough characters and stories to merit at least a miniseries.  But perhaps one of the film's messages is that time is fleeting, often barely acknowledged even as we're living it.

I was not crazy about Zemeckis' repeated use of squares and rectangles onscreen in which we see parts of earlier or later times while we're watching something else.  Really added nothing.

HERE tanked at the box office.  It does play like late 20th century Hollywood schmaltz.  Today's young audiences don't dig it.  It is a film that will be best appreciated by those who've lived a bit of life.  Maybe are longtime Zemeckis fans.  I would qualify as both, and the very idea of it captivated me, springboarding recollections of when I sat in apartments and wondered what went down years before in the very places I sat.  That flight of fancy could occupy my thoughts for days at a time.  And sustain me though a good but not great movie.