Here Parent Guide

It’s easy to think that history only happens in important places. Babylon. Athens. Rome. London. But every part of this planet has experienced change over the ages of existence. Even the spot upon which you live.

This is the idea behind director Robert Zemeckis’ new film, Here. Inspired by Richard McGuire’s graphic novel of the same name, this production tells the tale of one spot in North America, following it from prehistory to the present day. It flits in and out of the lives of six families, spread out over centuries.

The movie does not skip evenly through time; most of the story lines are brief. There’s one involving an indigenous couple in an unspecified era, another with Benjamin Franklin’s Loyalist son. In the film’s principal home, a couple squabble about the husband’s passion for airplanes, and an inventor in the 1940s enjoys professional success and a passionate marriage. A twenty-first century Black couple deal with challenges relating to race and the Covid pandemic. In none of these storylines do characters have more than a few lines or more than one character trait. They are all historical trimming around the main story.

The key narrative revolves around the Young family. Al (Paul Bettany) survived World War II, and with his pregnant wife, Rose (Kelly Reilly), is ready to buy a comfortable house. They raise three children, and the eldest, Richard (Tom Hanks) soon brings his pregnant wife, Margaret (Robin Wright) to live with him in the family home. The fifty-plus years the Young family spend “here” are the heart of the film. In the Youngs’ lives, we see love, growth, selfishness, miscommunication, duty, passion, resentment, and change. (We also see some drinking, implied sex, and on-screen deaths, which explain the movie’s PG-13 rating.)

There’s nothing particularly exciting about any of the lives in Here. What makes the film distinctive is the format in which the stories are told. The only term I can come up with is a “collage montage”. We’re familiar with montages – romantic comedies are particularly fond of montages where scenes of the couple falling in love are layered together, backed up by a syrupy soundtrack. In this film, the montages jump through all the characters’ timelines but do so in a collage format, layered atop other time frames. So we might see Rose Young ironing while a cut out scene shows a nameless indigenous woman in the woods. This technique is frequently used as a way to segue between scenes, but sometimes it just seems to happen randomly. (I’m sure Zemeckis has a plan, but a single viewing doesn’t give me the ability to analyze all the time splits on screen.)

All choices have consequences, and the use of time collages on screen requires a fixed camera, focused on the house’s main room and bay window. The camera does not move until the film’s final moments, giving the movie a very static feel. In fact it feels like a stage play, which costs it the immersive feeling we have come to expect from movies. So, although this movie grabs your intention, it’s unlikely to take a place in your heart.