I Could Spend the Rest of My Life Here
Who’s there? Robert Zemeckis has spent most of this century burrowing deeper and deeper into techno-fetishism: after putting out two mega-hits in 2000 (What Lies Beneath and Cast Away), he crashed hard with The Polar Express in 2006, one of many collaborations with Tom Hanks, and still a benchmark for bad, borderline disturbing CGI. Nearly 20 years ago, it was impossible for a major motion picture to get by on “hyper-realistic” animation without freaking people out; I remember being in science class around 2007, and our teacher used the movie and its trailers and TV spots as an occasion to teach us about the concept of the Uncanny Valley.
By 2019, things hadn’t gotten much better: Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman was roundly criticized for its unconvincing “de-aging,” a process that made Robert De Niro and Al Pacino look a bit younger—a bit—but they still moved as old as they were. With hundreds of locations, action in World War II, and maneuvering all over the United States, it was hard not to notice how bad the “de-aging” looked, and even harder not to wonder why Scorsese didn’t cast someone as a younger De Niro or a younger Pacino.
No such issues with Here, Zemeckis’ latest, currently bombing in theaters. There was one older couple in the theater beside me last Thursday at the movie’s second Baltimore showtime. There were a lot more people at the theater on Friday, but it looks like they went to Anora—or Conclave. There’s no reason this movie should be bombing; I saw trailers for a month, but at the same theaters that heavily advertised Fly Me to the Moon, another movie “no one knew was even out.” In a healthier movie economy and industry, Here would’ve done decently this weekend, but I’m not sure about the next—now that I’ve seen it, I’d like to see it with a crowd, if that’s even going to be possible, because as safe as Zemeckis plays it, this is a relatively challenging movie. Why?
It’s played from one camera angle, spanning eons and featuring Benjamin Franklin as a supporting character. The camera is locked down with a wide angle lens, but Zemeckis uses frames within frames to jump between eras, from dinosaurs, to indigenous Americans, pre-revolutionary colonists, the people who dug the hole and built the house the camera ends up in, and the four families we see live there: an early aviator and his wife and daughter (he dies, but not in a plane crash—from Spanish Flu); the inventory of the Laz-E Boy, who promptly moves out around 1942; the star family, with Paul Bettany as a WWII vet recently returned and ready to start a family with his wife, played by Kelly Reilly; one of their sons is Tom Hanks, and he meets Robin Wright just out of high school; just as soon, she gets pregnant, they get married, and they live at home.
Dreams are pushed aside. Time flies by, even as the movie skips back and ahead, showing us bits of the present-day family and their Covid-stricken housekeeper. Alan Silvestri’s orchestral score is awful, but it leaves around 20 minutes in; as a result, Zemeckis can only do so much to dilute what can only be a bracing and sad approach to telling this story—any story. The life of this family is so cliched, the acting is so over the top, yet it all feels real—even the remarkable de-aging. Zemeckis is probably saved by locking his camera down—there are very few close-ups—but Hanks and Wright move somewhat convincingly as younger people, and their faces aren’t startling.
To that end, it probably would’ve been impossible to tell a more nuanced story like this. Here has all of the depth and heft of the first 10 minutes of Pixar’s Up, but without any manipulation; Zemeckis can’t help being schmaltzy, but by depriving himself of basic cinematic language, he illuminates the fine line between cliché and truth.
—Follow Nicky Otis Smith on Twitter and Instagram: @nickyotissmith