Forrest Gump was cheesy, euphemistic, and groundbreaking when it burst into theaters in 1994, and these characteristics still apply 30 years later. You either love this film or you hate it and sometimes all at the same time.
Now Tom Hanks and director Robert Zemeckis have made another film together and that’s not all: Robin Wright, whose tormented Jenny gave the sweet historical speedrun the necessary bitter note, is also there. The result is the comic film adaptation Here, which has been showing in German cinemas since this week.
65 million years of history in the here and now
A Robert Zemeckis film without an ingenious/borderline stupid technical trick wouldn’t be a Robert Zemeckis film, whether it lets Tom Hanks meet John F. Kennedy in documentary footage 65 million years of history told with just one camera angle. The latter happens in Here. The concept goes back to Richard McGuire’s graphic novel of the same name and is implemented in Here surprisingly consistently for a Hollywood film.
The fixed camera shot looks at a stretch of land inhabited by dinosaurs at the end of the Cretaceous period. Chunks of rock rain down from the sky, then the picture changes, jumping through 65 million years until indigenous people stream across these few square meters of forest. The film flashes forward several centuries and the foundation of a house is being built. A living room is created before our eyes.
Main characters crystallize over the course of time: Al (Paul Bettany) moves into this house with his wife Rose (Kelly Reilly) after the Second World War. Here his son Richard (Tom Hanks) gets closer to his future wife Margaret (Robin Wright). The “Home” turns into an ambivalent place for herone of happiness, of nostalgia, but comfort can also set limits and stifle dreams.
The concept of the film with Tom Hanks is radical
We are parked in the corner as an audience and watch as the residents and interior design fads fly by. The concept can be explained so succinctly, but formally, Here is one of the most radical Hollywood films of recent years. Since Robert Zemeckis is not a slow cinema director but a born entertainer, he naturally finds movement in the static.
People struggle with their career decisions and life plans, but there are no time limits to their images. Thanks to split screens and comic-like montages, one minute we’re looking at a beige 1960s home with a black and white television and the next second we’re looking at Benjamin Franklin’s son’s front yard. One time level breaks up the other, displaces it, and is then itself replaced. The Here in Here, we quickly learn, is a layered salad of fate, tears and laughter. Robert Zemeckis eats his way through it with cinematic fervor.
Here is much better than its reputation – despite its flaws
Zemeckis and co-author Eric Roth adapted not only the story of the graphic novel, but also its narrative style. In this respect, Here is similar to Ang Lee’s famous Marvel detour Hulk, which spiced up the action and character moments with comic-book style devices. As with the green chicken, the reviews for Here are negative. In the USA the film was literally dismissed, as if people had just been waiting to finally be able to mess around with one of Zemeckis’ failed technical experiments again.
Check out the trailer for Here:
Here – Trailer (German) HD
The points of criticism are striking, especially the somewhat undead eyes of Robin Wright, who has been rejuvenated using an AI engine. The effects leave more unpleasant marks on her than on her film husband Tom Hanks.
On the other hand, the entire concept of Here is so constructed that “realism” as a criterion is misleading anyway. It’s a Hollywood fable of fantastic proportions and ambitionwho sets herself an absurd task like a naive hero – à la Forrest Gump, one might say.
Here differs from its great predecessor in one crucial detail: Forrest ran through the big story. In Here, life flows unspectacularly. Birth and death could almost be interchangeable if it weren’t for the way the story is told. This stylizes the event as if the greatest – the only – story of all time was unfolding before us: kitschy, groundbreaking, bitter and unique.
Here will be in German cinemas from December 12th.