Lauren McQueen | Through the Shattered Lens

I really wanted to like Here.

Released in 2024, Here is the type of movie that I usually would like. It’s ambitious. It’s experimental. It’s about history and how certain patterns will always repeat themselves no matter what. It features Tom Hanks and Paul Bettany, two of my favorite actors. Also, unlike a lot of people, I haven’t turned on Robert Zemeckis. For the most part, I usually enjoy his movies, including the more recent ones. (Of course, when I say more recent, I’m thinking of The Walk, which came out eleven years ago. But still….)

Here has an intriguing concept. Over the course of 104 minutes, Here covers several thousand years of history. The stationary camera focuses on a single plot of land, which goes from being an area dominated by dinosaurs to being the road outside of Colonial Governor William Franklin’s house during the American Revolution to eventually becoming the living room of a house that is occupied by several different families. The story plays out in a nonlinear fashion with the marriage of Richard and Margaret Young (played by Tom Hanks and Robin Wright) ultimately dominating the narrative. We watch as people fall in love, sometimes fall out of love, and eventually die. With the exception of one key moment, the camera never moves. Instead, we watch as life plays out in front of the camera and it’s often left to our imagination as to what’s happening on the other side of the lens. When Margaret, at one point, complains about how she can’t stand to keep looking at the same couch day-after-day, we know exactly how she feels.

As I said, I really wanted to like this movie but, unfortunately, it just fell flat. We meet a lot of characters but no one really feels human. Instead, all of the dialogue and the action has the shallow snappiness of an old sitcom. It’s easy to imagine this film being aired with a laugh track and an audience going, “Awwww!” after every emotional moment. As a result, watching Here feels less like witnessing history unfold and more like flipping around the nostalgia channels and trying to pick which old sitcom you want to watch. Do you want to watch the show about Ben Franklin not liking his son or the show that features Paul Bettany as a veteran dealing with PSTD? Do you want a show about a pilot who dies during the Spanish Flu epidemic or about a masked-up husband during the COVID lockdowns? One of the film’s final scenes features a character who is suffering from Alzheimer’s visiting the house and suddenly announcing that they remember everything about living there. It’s a moment that is meant to be heartfelt but, instead, it feels insulting to anyone who has ever taken care of a loved one with dementia. Alzheimer’s is never cutesy, regardless of what the movies may tell us. In the end, very little of the film’s vision of humanity feels authentic.

The other big problem is that the film occasionally uses digital de-aging to try to convince us that Tom Hanks and Robin Wright are both teenagers and it just doesn’t work. Hanks is playing Paul Bettany’s son but, whenever the two actors appear at the same time, it’s obvious that Hanks is considerably older than his screen father. Unlike The Irishman, which had a strong story and enough good performances to convince the viewer to suspend their disbelief and accept the imperfect de-aging technology, the de-aging in Here just emphasizes how inauthentic the film’s story feels.

As I said earlier, this film had potential but, unfortunately, most of that potential goes unrealized.

And that really is a shame.