"Interesting Experiment but Often Falls Flat"
| None | Light | Moderate | Heavy | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Language | ||||
| Violence | ||||
| Sex | ||||
| Nudity |
What You Need To Know:
The camera in HERE is static until the final scene, which is admittedly rather moving. However, the static camera dilutes the drama and humor. HERE is an interesting experiment, but it often falls flat. The movie is also too humanist, with no uplifting, positive references to God, Jesus or the Bible. It also some politically correct Anti-American, feminist elements. Finally, HERE is marred by eight strong profanities and one “f” word.
Content:
More Detail:
HERE is based on a comic book graphic novel, where the visuals are static pictures of multiple families across multiple timelines interacting from the same position in space, the living room of a Pennsylvanian house built in 1907, plus visions of dinosaurs and the rise of mammals years ago. There are also brief scenes with Benjamin Franklin’s family and with an Indian maiden and her paramour before the Colonial Period. The static camera of HERE bleeds much of the drama out of its various stories, leaving only intermittent fits of dramatic and comical human interactions. HERE also has a humanist, and perhaps even shallow, perspective on life. For example, it focuses mostly on the materialist, mundane and superficial facets of it rather than its purpose, meaning or deeply philosophical and spiritual aspects.
The house in question is situated across from the historical mansion of Benjamin Franklin. The families depicted include vignettes about an Indian maiden and her paramour, who fornicate and have a baby. There are also short vignettes with Franklin and/or his son with Franklin’s grandson, before the house is built.
Chronologically speaking, the next family is the family that first buys the house in 1907. The father is an avid aviator, but his wife is afraid he’s going to kill himself one day. A quirky female artist next owns the house, but she doesn’t seem to do much. Jump to a married couple in the early 1940s, where the husband is a furniture salesman who invents what becomes the Lazyboy Recliner.
The head of the family that owns the house longest is a World War II pilot. Al and his wife, Rose, buy the house in 1945 and have three children, two boys and a girl. The oldest boy is Richard, played by Tom Hanks. In the 1960s, Richard has a girlfriend, Margaret. She becomes pregnant with him out of wedlock. They marry in the living room and live with Richard’s parents for more than 20 years, when their only child, Vanessa, becomes a lawyer.
All is not right between Richard and Margaret, however. Richard used to have dreams of becoming a painter, then an architect, but settled for a mundane, low-paying salesman’s job to take care of his family. Also, he never had the ambition to leave his parents’ house, and Margaret eventually becomes fed up with his attitude.
Finally, a black family buys the house from Richard after his parents die. However, there are few scenes with this family, except for a scene where the father instructs his teenage son what to do whenever he’s stopped by a policemen while he’s driving. Don’t remove your hands from the wheel, he says, until you politely ask the officer, and he verbally tells you whether it’s okay.
The camera in HERE is static throughout the movie until the final scene. There’s an inherent power in that final scene that quite moving. However, this only proves that the Director, Robert Zemeckis of FOREST GUMP and BACK TO THE FUFUTRE fame, should have moved the camera much more frequently.
Of course, that’s the whole issue of making a movie based on this particular graphic novel, HERE, by acclaimed comic book artist and storyteller Robert McGuire. The book is full of static tableaus containing multiple timeframes, with no movement within each frame. For example, one tableau shows a large picture of a boy sleeping on a couch in the living room in 1941. Within that larger frame are smaller frames of individual people in static poses. For example, there’s smaller picture frames of two people doing something in 1996; of the upper head of a man in 1990 with his glasses high on his forehead while he says, “I took a nap, and when I woke, I didn’t know where I was”; of a character with bare feet and covered by a blanket standing in 1975; and, of a man in a straw hat aiming his cane at a man on the floor in 1910. Some of these scenes continue within the next tableau, which sets up various stories in various timeframes.
This is not exactly how a movie works, however. The word movie is a shortened form of the words “motion picture,” where there’s movement within and across multiple frames, usually within the same time period, and where the camera is free to wander in and out of the frame, even if you have a split screen of two separate scenes.
Furthermore, by placing the camera in the back of the living room, this movie version of HERE distances the moviegoer from the action inside the frames. This results in some boring moments. Also, it means that people watching in the back half of the theater can’t really appreciate all the visuals in the movie and all the character interactions within the main frame and the smaller frame inserts.
That said, Director Robert Zemeckis, his crew and his actors deserve some credit for attempting and executing such a unique, elaborate experiment. As such, HERE may offer increased pleasure to moviegoers who would like to see the movie more than once. The last scene in HERE is probably the most powerful scene. That’s because the camera finally moves! However, there are also some other moving and fun scenes involving various characters.
The problem is, HERE has a strong humanist and secular, perhaps even shallow, worldview. This, it focuses on the materialist, everyday and psychological facets of life rather than its purpose or meaning. As such, the movie ignores or even neglects the spiritual or deeply philosophical and moral aspects of life. Thus, there are no really uplifting, positive references to God, Jesus or the Bible, but there are eight strong profanities blaspheming God and Jesus. HERE also seems to have some politically correct elements. As such, it seems to have negative views of modern American, capitalist life, the police treatment of black people, and race relations in America. It also has a politically correct feminist subtext where Richard’s wife Margaret and her spirit are stifled by his lack of ambition. She hates living in the same house with his parents for so many years and never going anywhere, and she eventually leaves him to explore the world and what it has to offer.
To sum up, HERE is an interesting experiment, but it often falls flat, is too humanist and contains nine strong, gratuitous obscenities and profanities.
