Film review: A 30-year reunion of director Robert Zemeckis and his Forest Gump stars Tom Hanks and Robin Wright should elicit excitement, even if you’re just in it for the nostalgia. But while Forrest ran across America, Here stays resolutely in one place somewhere on the Atlantic seaboard, with the conceit of all the action playing out in just one room, shot from just one angle, as it depicts a succession of families’ lives across centuries.
But despite its cast and the technological curiosity of seeing Hanks and Wright de-aged to their Gump-era selves, Here is narratively bland, stagey in its acting and, at times, tone deaf and borderline racist.
Hanks and Wright lead the main storyline as teenagers Richard and Margaret Young, who meet, fall pregnant and marry in the early 1960s. Economically obliged to live at home with Richard’s parents (Paul Bettany and Kelly Reilly), the younger Youngs raise their baby daughter and grow gradually older before our eyes.
Told as a non-linear narrative, that flits back and forth in time, other subplots set on the same piece of land involve dinosaurs being extinguished by meteors (obvious), a Native American couple from the area’s Lenni Lenape people (cringy), and the 18th-century estate of Benjamin Franklin’s illegitimate son (who?). The stories include nods to historical events such as the Spanish flu, Covid-19 and the invention of the La-Z-Boy recliner chair.
That’s a lot to pack in, and unfortunately this plethora of ideas is clumsily executed. Hanks and Wright are okay, considering the prosaic dialogue, but even with spurts of technical wizardry, the sole, static camera means everyone’s performance is impeded ‒ it all looks and feels like a play ‒ unless a character walks right up to the lens, which feels awkwardly theatrical.
The sole highlight is Bettany’s captivating turn as Mr Young Sr: a broken returned serviceman who hugs the liquor cabinet in every scene, berating his insurance-selling son (a youthful Hanks) for wanting to be an artist.
A strange stylistic choice which plonks white rectangular “frames” in the middle of a random shot can be explained by Here’s origin as a 2014 graphic novel by Richard McGuire. Kudos, then, to Zemeckis for embracing new technology and original methods of storytelling. But his multi-period piece tries to do too much, and winds up mishandling important topics, such as dementia, racism and self-determination. It’s saccharine, jarring and awful. Instead of leaving charmed, I left gobsmacked.
Rating out of five: ★★
Here, directed by Robert Zemeckis, is in cinemas now.
