FILM REVIEW
HERE
Rated PG-13
104 Minutes
Released November 1st
Here was directed by Robert Zemeckis and stars Tom Hanks and Robin Wright. This is the first time all three have all worked together since Forrest Gump (1994). Several other notable actors round out the cast. However, it’s not the acting that drives this movie, it’s the concept. The whole film takes place in one spot, predominantly, a living room in a suburban house. The story flips back and forth between eras from millions of years ago to the future. I’m not a fan of stories that don’t follow the flow of a timeline because your ability to have empathy with the characters is hindered, but this movie is a montage of the different people who have lived in that space over the years.
On The Late Show with Steven Colbert, Hanks describes Zemeckis’ style of directing as a throwing-out of ideas while the shoot is going on, to see what everyone thinks, of using his imagination on the fly to move the story ahead. Zemeckis trusts his cast to be part of the creative process and lets them play with a scene rather than map it out completely ahead of time. The result in Here is a heartfelt instinctive painting of the lives that have occupied one space over the years. One vignette will melt into the next and offers a sense of time moving on, but the relationships seem superficial. Only the space is constant. I think Zemeckis could have done more to make the room a character by highlighting textures, colors, light, and shadows, rather than just use it as a backdrop for the characters.
The idea for this film does not belong to Zemeckis. The movie is based on a creation by Richard McGuire which began as a six-page comic book in 1989 and then grew into a hugely popular 304-page graphic novel that was published in 2014. McGuire granted permission to the director to base the movie on his novel and even visited the set frequently. McGuire is an artist, and he captures the essence of each scene as a visual image, so his book served loosely as a storyboard for Zemeckis The idea came to McGuire originally when he had just moved into a new apartment in 1989 and was “thinking about the person who lived there before me.”
In the novel, he places scenes in “windows” overlaying other scenes, and he notes that this style was inspired by the early version of computers and Windows OS. The novel shows panels that depict the lives in the same space from 3,000,500,000 BC to AD 22,175. Of the process of creating this work, McGuire says, “I can see the book now with fresh eyes. I’d forgotten all the struggle it took to bring it to life. It took years. I had a lot of doubts along the way, I honestly didn’t know what I was doing. I just gathered material and kept moving ahead instinctually.” He believes that today “social media may have shortened the distances between here, there and everywhere, but it’s also created fragmentation. People now see the world through their devices.”
A home is a foundation. We do become mentally attached to our homes, whether they are a cramped single apartment, a van, or a mansion. The sensory experience of our surroundings is more integral than you think to your life. My grandparents’ house on Bass Rocks on the edge of the Atlantic Ocean will always be part of my essence. I spent many happy days there in the summers of my childhood. The house was built in 1900 to replace another that had burned down, and on a wall by the hallway hung an early photo of the original house.
When my grandmother died, Grandpa sold the house, and I did not see it again for many years. I traveled there in 2017 and knocked on the door. A kind renter allowed me in, and to my amazement, all my grandparents’ furnishings were still there in place. It was an eerie and wonderful experience, like a giant time capsule. Sad to say, last year I went back again and found it had been completely remodeled, all new interior furnishings. But for me, its heart was still there.
Each viewer will have their own experience with Here. Use this movie as an exercise in being here now, an invitation to see life as a series of paintings set to symphonies that make up the vast montage of feelings, thoughts, and actions that define being here. As McGuire says, “The small things are what make up our lives more than anything else.”
Kathryn Whitney Boole has spent most of her life in the entertainment industry, which has been the backdrop for remarkable adventures with extraordinary people. She is a Talent Manager with Studio Talent Group in Santa Monica. kboole@gmail.com
