My guess is that many if not most of us of a certain age have returned to the site of our childhood homes long after we’ve moved out, just to see what it looks like now. There’s something deep and existential about considering how a myriad of lives, of moments, will exist in the same corner of the Earth through the years and even the centuries.
The legendary Chicago filmmaker Robert Zemeckis platforms that concept into the admirably bold but profoundly disappointing and cloying experimental “Here.” Even with Zemeckis reuniting with “Forrest Gump” writer Eric Roth and stars Tom Hanks and Robin Wright, the promising concept of telling the stories of multiple families as seen through a fixed-camera perspective of the living room of one house (and the land that occupied it before that) collapses under the ponderous, crushing weight of an overstuffed plot, overly theatrical performances and a number of main characters who are depressing, tedious and dull.
This is a home run swing that results in a strikeout and a long trudge back to the dugout.
Based on the graphic novel of the same name by Richard McGuire, “Here” moves back and forth, unnecessarily and sometimes confusingly so, along a timeline that is set primarily in the 20th and early 21st century but goes back tens of millions of years to the Triassic Period, when dinosaurs stomped through the patch of New England land that would eventually become the site of a spacious, two-story house. (We never go upstairs and only briefly catch glimpses of areas other than that living room.)
We get a number of thinly drawn, message-heavy storylines involving (deep breath):
William Franklin (Daniel Betts), a Loyalist informer for the British and cartoonishly dopey, extra-marital son of Benjamin Franklin. William lived in a mansion across the way from the future site of the house featured in the story.An Indigenous couple (Joel Oulette and Dannie McCallum) who spend their lives in and around this spot, which means the home was built on a Native American burial site.In the early 20th century, a rigid and humorless activist (Michelle Dockery) is constantly fretting that her aviation enthusiast husband (Gwilym Lee) is going to die while flying his plane.A few decades later, the house is occupied by a free-spirited couple (Ophelia Lovibond and David Frynn), with the husband tinkering for years on an invention that would become an iconic piece of Americana furniture.In the near-present, a successful Black couple (Nicholas Pinnock and Nikki Amuka-Bird) moves into the home, which has a value of around a million dollars (a far cry from the $3,400 Joe and Rose paid for it in 1945). We’re subjected to near-cringe and unsubtle social commentary when the father explains in detail to their young adult son the steps he should take if he’s ever pulled over by the police.
Mostly, though, “Here” focuses on 50-plus years in the lives of the Young family. (They’re young, but then they’re not!) Paul Bettany is Al Young, a World War II veteran who develops a serious drinking problem and a volatile temper, and Kelly Reilly is Al’s wife Rose. Tom Hanks plays their son Richard and Robin Wright is Richard’s bride Margaret. We meet them as teenagers, with the impressive but still slightly artificial-looking digital de-aging techniques making Hanks look like he did in the “Splash” era and Wright resembling her “Princess Bride” days.
The film also makes use of a kind of “picture-in-picture” gimmick to transport us from one era to the next and back, with visual cues on various TV sets, e.g., The Beatles on “The Ed Sullivan Show,” and needle drops such as “Our House” (ahem) by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young reflecting particular time periods.
The camera stays rigid, but on occasion the actors will step forward and dominate the frame, often employing over-the-top acting styles more suited to a theatrical production.
Over the generations, the living room is the setting for restrained make-out sessions, a wedding, a funeral, some serious medical episodes, a number of holiday tableaus — and much bickering and conflict, mostly between the deeply unhappy Al and Rose, and later between the equally unhappy Richard and Margaret. Like his father, Richard is in a constant state of worry and regret, and he resents what he perceives to be the unkindness of fate. It’s a curious and off-putting choice to make so many of the central characters in “Here” filled with anger and sadness and ennui.
The great love stories in this film are the ones that exist on the periphery; when it comes to the Young family, that house and that living room feel more like a prison than a place that holds treasured memories. This is a tale that could have been truly moving, but instead, it feels like we’re looking through old photo albums of strangers who didn’t seem particularly happy much of the time.