Here

Robert Zemeckis' latest wrings out more from its gimmick than you expect

Aside from Robert Zemeckis’ obsession with cutting edge cinematic technology, he’s been fascinated with time and the way humans interact and reflect with it. It was a blatant theme in Back to the Future (1985) and overly nostalgic in Forrest Gump (1994). In his latest, Zemeckis looks at the effects that the passage of time has from a singular camera angle.

Here (2024) is the story of a spot of land and the happenings that occur on it. There is a single camera angle for the entirety of the film, from where we see the dinosaurs, ice age, and eventual human habitation. We specifically hone in on the living room of a middle-class American family in the second half of the 20th century; WWII veteran Al (Paul Bettany), his wife Rose (Kelly Reilly), and later Al’s eldest son Richie (Tom Hanks) and his partner Margaret (Robin Wright).

Zemeckis chooses not to tell the history of his spot chronologically. We instead jump through storylines, joined by themes. This is achieved with a fluid editing style where panes on the screen fade-in showing an interposed window into a different era, eventually filling out the entire screen. This technique is the most impressive of Here’s gimmicks. De-aging technology is employed for many scenes featuring the central family. We see Tom Hanks age from a young teenager to an old man. While this de-aging technology is getting better than its first uses in Terminator: Genisys (2015) and Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), there is still an “uncanny valley” feeling when Hanks or Wright approach the camera too closely.

The concept of Here is too ambitious to fit within a condensed film. To tell a story from the beginning of time to the present, featuring characters we should care about is a tremendous challenge. Credit where it’s due, Here does craft an engaging and fast paced narrative. However, the expanse of characters and stories dilutes the central family, which Zemeckis is clearly more interested in than the other storylines. The need to introduce so many milestones and dramatic moments in such short bursts also means that much of Here’s dialogue is blunt exposition. One scene has a stranger spill her entire medical history to a realtor in an open house unprompted. This rushed pace manes there isn’t room for any form of emotional pauses to take hold.

Here's cast elevate most of the barebones narrative and characters. Many filmmakers would kill to have an arsenal of performers with the likes of Bettany, Hanks, and Wright. It is thanks to their delivery, that more emotional beats are wrung from the script than it deserved. The rapid switching of scenes, though, doesn’t let us sit and simmer in any performance too long, meaning that everyone feels like fleeting visitors. This might transmit a message on the fleetingness of life well, but it has to be a problem when you don’t feel like you’ve watched a Tom Hanks performance.

Zemeckis has been waylaid by his ambitions towards cinematic techniques or gimmicks over storytelling and characters before (anyone remember Welcome to Marwen (2018)?). With Here much of the same seems to occur, however, thanks to a deft editing and adept performers, the film pulls off a more comprehensive and emotional film than its risky ambition set up. However, Here is less likely to be remembered for its characters and story than for its refreshing if constraining single angle trick.

6.2/10