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“HERE” (2024, 104 min., directed by Robert Zemeckis)
Understanding what “Here” is about requires understanding what its director is interested in.
An ungenerous reading of Robert Zemeckis would liken his movies to the paintings of Norman Rockwell: schmaltzy, sincere, iconographic depictions of a white American experience which no longer exists, if it ever did.
Many of his best-known films would stand up to that read.
“Back to the Future” is about a good American kid, rock ‘n roll, entrepreneurship, “getting the girl” and, broadly, a 1950s small town with all the nostalgic charm and none of the unsavory iniquity.
“Cast Away” is about perseverance, survival, industry, capitalism, “can-do” spirit and, ultimately, the glamor of Kerouacian self-determination.
“Forrest Gump” is about Vietnam, Elvis Presley, the military, hippies, capital investment, AIDS, the South, Watergate, New York City and, generally, American history of the 20th century.
However, to dismiss Zemeckis movies on the grounds of their deep infatuation with America would be to ignore the resultant impact they’ve had on American culture.
“Back to the Future” became synonymous with 80s blockbusters and spawned two successful sequels. “Cast Away” cemented Tom Hanks as a movie star who could carry a film with only a volleyball for company. “Forrest Gump” won Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor – Hanks again — Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Film Editing and Best Visual Effects. It was nominated for an additional seven.
Quotes from these film have become modern American idioms. Their images, characters and stories remain entrenched in the zeitgeist decades later.
Even a critically reviled and undeniably strange Zemeckis joint like “The Polar Express” is inextricable from the December memories of a certain generation.
As time went on, Zemeckis also became more and more fascinated with new technologies.
“The Polar Express,” “A Christmas Carol,” “Beowulf” and “Welcome to Marwen” are rendered in creepy, uncanny motion-capture animation. “Who Framed Roger Rabbit?” famously combined live action with hand drawn animation. Zemeckis experimented with dizzying IMAX techniques in “The Walk.” “Back to the Future Part II” incorporated now-rudimentary but then-trailblazing CGI.
To summarize: The Zemeckis filmography is obsessed with using new technology to tell dated American stories.
“Here” is the epitome of this mission.
The film is adapted from Richard Maguire’s 2014 graphic novel of the same name and shares a conceit: the story takes place entirely from one angle of one room across centuries of time.
The camera in “Here” remains fixed while the scene shifts, depicting a single corner of space from the dinosaur age to the 2020s. Occasionally, insert shots appear, creating windows into other time periods while much of the scene takes place in another.
It’s a trippy concept and a great idea for a graphic novel, where visual resplendence can take precedent over narrative coherence. It is a much stranger premise framed in the lens of a big budget studio film starring Tom Hanks and Robin Wright.
It’s not that “Here” is bad, per se. The film is competently made and performed. Ironically, it all just feels like a remnant of another time.
For instance, while the film is a trailblazer for utilizing generative AI in movies, it’s not forward thinking with its usage. While the ostensible structure of “Here” flashes back and forth across millenia, it feels stuck in the milieu of last millennium. Heck, it spends more time de-aging Hanks, 68, and Wright, 58, to their 20s than thinking about ways to further cinematic expression.
The camera resting static on a proscenium while its players combat in-camera trickery isn’t even a new concept. Georges Méliès was doing the same thing in 1896.
While the film and graphic novel share a premise, they have a fundamental difference in mission. The book is focused on the history of a place and what that says about people. The movie wants to depict the history of a family and what it says about a place.
The film features a rotating cast of characters across its timeline, but centers around a couple played by Hanks and Wright. The two advance through decade after decade of Zemeckian American history, beginning in 1945 and ending in 2024, gaining more and more AI wrinkles along the way.
There are other characters, but they exist wholly in the story’s periphery, a strange side quest as best — the inventor of the La-Z-Boy chair and his virile relationship with his partner are prominently featured — and frustratingly pandering at worst — two members of the Indigenous Lenape people are depicted without names, dialogue or personalities in a recurring but spare segment.
Hanks, Wright and their family exist exclusively inside the ideas of Zemeckis America: Christmas, of course. The nuclear family. WWII and military valor. Entrepreneurial instinct and the American dream. Television and mid-century pop music. Benjamin Franklin and colonial America. Offensive Halloween costumes and a rotating carousel of holiday tradition. Divorce and reconciliation. Creating art no matter what anyone else says or the financial losses that might occur.
That last theme felt particularly self-reflexive for “Here.”
The only characters that aren’t heteronormative, middle-class, white Christian Americans are the silent Lenape and a Black couple living in the 2020s with their Hispanic housekeeper. These characters are introduced, given a scene devoted to a father telling his son how to handle the police, grapple with the housekeeper’s death and get very little else to do. Their inclusion feels like an afterthought in a film solely interested in its centerpiece.
For those craving something nostalgically familiar, “Here” offers it up, consecrating the status quo of the Zemeckis canon, though with an AI veneer.
However, if your lived experience here, in real life America, is anything beyond the confines of the aniquated vision of “Here,” there’s little left to hold onto. The film is all surface, much like a well-drawn cover of a shallow magazine.
The eventual Blu-ray release would look at home with a coffee table stack of the Saturday Evening Post.
Rating: 2/5
“HERETIC” (2024, 111 min., directed by Scott Beck and Bryan Woods)
Where “Here” is clear about its message and mission, “Heretic” is little more choose-your-own-adventure.
The film is the latest thriller from “A Quiet Place” scribes Scott Beck and Bryan Woods and stars Sophie Thatcher and Chloe East as two Mormon missionaries who encounter the megalomaniacal Mr. Reed, played with absurd charisma by Hugh Grant.
Thatcher is Sister Barnes, a confident, competent, cool and collected crusader for Christianity. Barnes acts as a mentor for East’s Sister Paxton, who misses the suaveness of her colleague but lacks nothing in sweetness.
Games are prominently featured in “Heretic” — particularly an amusing segment involving several iterations of Monopoly — and Paxton and Barnes are Mr. Reed’s pieces.
Reed traps the girls inside his house and forces them into a conversational chess match about the alleged futility of religion by preying on their profession’s indoctrinated courtesy: it would be rude to leave without making their best attempt to guide Reed to the Mormon faith.
For a thriller premise, the locked house trope is pretty rote. However, “Heretic” has ideas about religion that keep it from seeping solely into stereotype.
Grant is on fire as a quippy, quirky questioner, and his character’s condescension is entertainingly exasperating rather than obnoxious. The first hour of the film is fueled by his propulsive banter.
It’s perhaps why the film’s second half feels so lackluster. The first half of the script is tight, fast and funny, working through orchestrated plot twists with a conductor’s finesse. The second opts for scares over screed, yet lacks the panache and passion for thrills it clearly has for talk. There are scary moments but far fewer interesting ones.
“Heretic” works best when it’s aligned with Reed’s design. It cannot be understated how much fun Grant is to watch in the role. While sections of the script are similar to something you might read in an atheist Reddit thread, Grant delivers with such devilish charm you can’t help but hear him out.
The cinematography is worth noting as well. “Heretic” is beautifully shot for a thriller of its ilk. The camera turns and swivels around the characters’ heads as points are lobbied back and forth. Paxton, Barnes and Reed are given deliberate and dramatic closeups. In an early scene, the two women are framed beneath massive Utah mountains like tiny but resilient missionary missiles.
It’s a shame the film doesn’t come together in any memorable way. Its closing sermon is more muddled than ambiguous, tired than profound. Say a little prayer of gratitude that this thriller features three fantastic performances, but doubting the third act would not be heretical.
Rating: 3/5