“Here”

Robert Zemeckis

Mario Valento

“Here” is a mawkish, contrived, antiquated movie. The premise is fascinating: the camera is restricted to a single point in space, but the narrative is unstuck in time, roving from the dinosaur age to today. Intrigued? Don’t bother. The camera (and the viewer) is soon imprisoned in a 20th-century home and subjected to the boilerplate lives of a two? Three?  families, none of whom are given ample depth for us to care. Whenever a character is killed (Mr. Harter by the Spanish Flu, Raquel by COVID-19, Al Young’s friend by a heart attack) I’m left seething at the half-hearted, heavy-handed attempts by Robert Zemeckis, of “Forrest Gump” fame, to make me cry. He might as well have sucked at my tear ducts with a straw.

In fact, “Here” practically recreates “Forrest Gump.” They share stars, directors, screenwriters, cinematographers, and composers. Thus, the earlier film’s issues—its obsession with historical trivia, its punishment of nonconformity, its dearth of social reality—are transposed into a less optimistic era with nauseating results.

This sin is evident in the film’s ending. The main couple, Richard (Tom Hanks) and Margaret Young (Robin Wright), have divorced by the film’s end. Just as Jenny Curran is punished with disease for her hippie lifestyle in “Gump,” so is Margaret punished with dementia for divorcing Richard in “Here.” Although both Richard and Margaret are happier as divorcees, co-writers Zemeckis and Roth decide the film must end with them reuniting at the house which Margaret hated. Her last line, prompted by Richard’s reminiscing, is a forced, joyful “This was our house!” Thirty years after “Gump,” Zemeckis and Roth still imagine that a happy woman is a domesticated one; but for “Here” to uphold that claim, they must addle Margaret with dementia. How sad. Wherever “Here” is, I don’t want to be there.