“Here” works out of order, mostly with tiny, overlapping vignettes. As with McGuire’s book, we’re often looking at images within images on screen.
A facile chore most of the way, capped by an odds-defying finish of some genuine emotion, “Here” comes from the sublime 2014 graphic novel by Richard McGuire and his earlier six-page version of the same idea, published in 1989.
Most folks seeing the movie will likely take a chance on it for other reasons. It’s a reunion, 30 years later, of director Robert Zemeckis and the stars of “Forrest Gump,” Tom Hanks and Robin Wright. In “Here,” they play an ordinary couple, Richard and Margaret, from their teenage courtship to what appears to be their 80s. How this is achieved, and how you respond to the technology behind the process, will provide the make-or-break factor in your reaction. Me? Well, my eyes have seen the glory of the coming of AI, and I don’t like what it does to the actors, or to a story’s human factor.
Like McGuire’s book, Zemeckis’ film, which he co-wrote with Eric Roth, contains its visual perspective to a single vantage point, with one climactic exception, of Richard’s family living room as seen from a corner. The front door is partially visible on the left; the fireplace is on the right; the furniture, the wall treatments, the colors and the years go and come, and come and go again.
“Here” is where Richard grew up, and where he and Margaret begin their adult lives together. He’s a talented graphic artist; at one point, he reveals his grand designs for a house of their own. But life has a way with obstacles. Straight off, a pregnancy at age 18 pushes Richard into a steady insurance job he does not like. He follows in his fundamentally unhappy father’s footsteps, avoiding his father’s alcoholism, while Margaret focuses on parenthood and does her best to ignore her own potential and desires, at a cost.
