Cinema, above anything else, is pictures in motion - how they move, why they move and where they’re moving to. Obviously, but this thesis is the entire backbone to Robert Zemeckis’ Here. A formally radical film where the camera is fixed on a single perspective overlooking a very specific point of American geography. Here, dinosaurs once roamed the earth, significant inventions were made, family gatherings were held, as well as almost every up and down in the average American life. All within this American living room you get frames within frames, time within time, and lives within lives. Here is a voyage through time, but also a meditation on the very geography Americans live their lives on - almost like a spiritual successor to Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life. 

 

You look over many lives in Here, but the main meat of the film is how we see WWII veteran Al Young (Paul Bettany) settle into post-war America suburbia with his wife Rose. We see him raise his family, and then we later transition to following this generation of Al’s children, mostly his son Richard (Tom Hanks) and his life with his wife Margaret (Robin Wright). One fears maybe a director like Zemeckis would be saccharine and unrealistic here as he’s at times been before in previous films, but here, he’s surprisingly somber and solemn. Not to say it doesn't have moments of high emotion, but Zemeckis contemplates hard on the post-war chase of the American Dream, and where that said dream is now. Though Hanks and Wright are no doubt spectacular, the highlight of Here is by far Paul Bettany’s performance as Al Young. You see almost a whole life here, and it’s such a fascinating turn to see from Bettany.

 

The whole film relies on such a formally radical hook that one may wonder if it works or not, and I feel it does… most of the time. We really see an honest and sincere perspective in this voyage of time, and at times, it is quite captivating and impressive. However, one does wonder if the drama and structure of this would be more engaging if the film were more standard. To say it’s just theater would be disingenuous perhaps, but at times, it doesn’t do much to distance itself from it. There are some clever editing tricks within the frame, but then there’s the dramatic distance that almost makes this feel like a museum piece. Here is captivating, and different. Such a radical big swing from Zemeckis as he displays meditations about America and its place in not only time, but even our own planet.