On Screen: “Here”
Here
Robert Zemeckis is a courageous, innovative filmmaker. Never resting on his “Forrest Gump,” “Back to the Future,” “Cast Away” laurels, he’s obsessed with technology and its countless possibilities.
With the camera firmly fixed on a wide-angle vantage point, his newest film — “Here” — traces one particular living space through the prism of time. Set on a New England plot of land, Zemeckis’s visual perspective never changes while everything around it does.
Beginning before recorded time, Indigenous people lived there. Then came the settlers, including Benjamin Franklin’s estranged son who built a huge colonial manor across the street.
Constructed in 1902, Pauline (Michelle Dockery) first lived in the house with her aviation-obsessed husband John (Gwilyn Lee), followed by reclining chair inventor Leo (David Flynn) and his wife Stella (Ophelia Lovibond) in the 1930s.
In 1945 — shortly after W.W.II — the two-story house was purchased for $3,400 by Army veteran Al Young (Paul Bettany) and his wife Rose (Kelly Reilly), who raised three children there.
When their son, aspiring artist Richard (Tom Hanks), impregnates his high school sweetheart Margaret (Robin Wright), he puts his dreams aside, taking a mundane job and raising their daughter (Zsa Zsa Zemeckis). Because finances are tight, they move in with Al and Rose, although Margaret always yearns for a home of her own.
Years pass. There are weddings, births, deaths and break-ups, accompanied by suffering, soul-searching, sentimentality and a steep climb in real estate value.
To transition between time periods, Zemeckis cleverly uses pop-up windows, evoking crucial pop culture moments (like when the Beatles appeared on Ed Sullivan’s TV show), and delves into AI’s digital de-aging process.
Adapted from the 2014 conceptual graphic novel by Richard McGuire, it’s episodically scripted by Zemeckis’s “Forrest Gump” collaborator Eric Roth as a cinematically ambitious, non-linear, intergenerational meditation on mortality.
Only the inclusion of a cautionary vignette featuring a contemporary Black family (Nikki Amuka-Bird, Nicholas Pinnock, Cache Vanderpuye) — who buy the house for $1 million in 2015 after the Youngs vacate — seems oddly jarring.
On the Granger Gauge of 1 to 10, “Here” is a stationary, static, yet solid 7, playing in theaters.
Susan Granger is a product of Hollywood. Her natural father, S. Sylvan Simon, was a director and producer at M.G.M. and Columbia Pictures. Her adoptive father, Armand Deutsch, produced movies at M.G.M.
As a child, Susan appeared in movies with Abbott & Costello, Red Skelton, Lucille Ball, Margaret O’Brien, and Lassie. She attended Mills College in California, studying journalism with Pierre Salinger, and graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with highest honors in journalism.
During her adult life, Susan has been on radio and television as an anchorwoman and movie and drama critic, syndicating her reviews and articles around the world, including Video Librarian. She has appeared on American Movie Classics and Turner Classic Movies. In 2017, her book 150 Timeless Movies was published by Hannacroix Creek Books. Her website is www.susangranger.com.