Film review: Here crams a lot of time into a very small space

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No matter where you go, there you are. It’s a bit of circular wisdom that fits nicely into the structure of Here, co-written and directed by Robert Zemeckis. The premise of Here is that someone somehow plunked a movie camera down on a patch of ground during the late Cretaceous period in what would one day be New England, and left it running for the next threescore million years or so.

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Its steady gaze captures some passing dinosaurs and, soon after, the asteroid strike that led to their demise. It sees hummingbirds (40-odd million years ago), early human settlers (a few thousand years back), Ben Franklin (200+ years) and then, around 1900, it ends up inside the living room of a house, where it witnesses several generations of homeowners and their families.

Chief among these are Al and Rose (Paul Bettany, Kelly Reilly), who bought the place for $3,400 just after the Second World War. Their offspring include Richard (Tom Hanks), who as a young man falls for Margaret (Robin Wright). They in turn will bring up their children in the house, after being unable to afford their own. (Financial insecurity is an odd but ever-present theme.)

Now, if you’re doing the math and wondering how Bettany (aged 53) and Reilly (44) can possibly be parents to Hanks (68) and in-laws to Wright (58), remember that Zemeckis is the one behind that static camera. Using the latest in de-ageing (and extra-ageing) technology, he turns his stars into younger and older versions of themselves as required.

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It’s a tall order, especially since we all remember younger versions of these stars in Splash or The Princess Bride, or even Forrest Gump (another Zemeckis movie), where they worked together.

But the results look pretty good, especially compared to some other recent attempts. (I’m looking at you, Irishman.) It helps that Hanks and Wright pitch their voices and carry their bodies in age-appropriate ways.

Zemeckis is less successful in some of the film’s smaller moments. That hummingbird looked particularly fake, and there are a couple of scenes in which digital creations were used in place of stunt people or practical effects, to unfortunate ends. Also the First Nations scenes, where the wardrobe looked a little too Hollywood for my liking.

Quibbles aside, it’s a lively romp through the decades, and while an unmoving point of view might sound deadly dull, it’s actually enlivened by a technique borrowed from the graphic novel on which the film is loosely based.

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To wit: While sometimes the action cuts wholesale from one time period to another, often it involves overlapping “windows” within the frame. So you might find yourself mostly watching Hanks’ character in 2000, while a portion of the screen shows the TV set from the 1950s, or the radio from 20 years earlier, or someone on the phone in just about any time period from 1900 on.

The house was first occupied by a couple (Michelle Dockery, Gwilym Lee) whose lives were shaped by the invention of the aeroplane and, later, the pandemic of 1918. It was also the home of Lee and Stella (David Fynn, Ophelia Lovibond), the former an inventor who created the La-Z-Boy.

And we see the family that moved in after Bettany’s clan departed, which takes us right up to the latest pandemic and just beyond. (You could say that Here ends Now, with a sudden camera movement that feels almost vertiginous after being so long in one place.)

Along the way, the story sometimes feels like it’s being driven more by connected themes than a traditional plot. There are numerous births, deaths, weddings and even a funeral, not to mention discussions of love, money, marriage and real estate, and moments around Thanksgiving, Christmas and birthdays.

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I wanted to be a little more transported by Here than I ultimately was. Though satisfyingly emotional in its structure, the technical wizardly can sometimes distract one from the simpler moments of storytelling. And the score, by Zemeckis’ frequent collaborator Alan Silvestri, is one of those don’t-trust-the-viewer-to-know-what-to-feel compositions. A little more period music (think Forrest Gump again) might have served the movie better.

But there’s still much to enjoy, and the film will no doubt have many pondering their own journeys through time. It’s a conversation-sparker of a film. Here? Hear, hear!

Here opens Nov. 1 in theatres.

3.5 stars out of 5

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