Here (2024)

 Robert Zemeckis famously loves his gimmicks and playing with new technologies in his visuals, he has ample opertunites for both in his new film 'Here'. 'Here' takes a single spot of ground in what is now New Jersey, and with one single camera angle (save the films closing shot) tells the story of what happened there over a vast scope of time. We see dinosaurs, the ice age, American Indians and an illegitimate son of Benjamin Franklin. The bulk of the narrative however is set in a home built on that spot in 1900 and 4 families, one of which stays two generations, who live there over roughly one and a quarter centuries.

The story is not told entirely in chronological order, and as this is based on a graphic novel we occasionally have insert panels showing us happings at the same location in different times. The most screen time by far goes to the Young family who lives there from roughly 1945 to 2010, genertion one presided over by husband and wife Paul Bettany and Kelly Reilly, generation two husband and wife Tom Hanks and Robin Wright, in a belated reteaming from Zemeckis's 'Forrest Gump'.

Critics and to a lesser extent audience's have not loved 'Here', it has 36% and 58% respective positive ratings from those groups on Rotten Tomatoes. I however liked this movie, I feel similarly about this as I do the movie 'Hardcore Henry', which is shot entirely in first person like a video game; someone was going to make movies with these conciets eventually, but we only really need one of each.

The characters are reasonably investiable 'every man' types and I am partial to multi generational sagas and seeing the scope of time presented in film and literature. Though most memorable for its visuals the story of 'Here' is really more literature then "movie" in type. It can be surifacey, it can feel condensed, and it can go out of its way to work in fads and other dated references. However, there is something powerful in its central idea of showing one place over a long period of time, and there is a scatering of workable joy and pathos throughout. I'm glad I saw it on the big screen because there will be nothing quit like it in theaters again. ***