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.
The house in the story was built in 1900; like the book, the film adaptation begins a little earlier, in 3,000,000,000 BCE, the primordial soup era. This phases into the time of the dinosaurs and the ice age, and the years when the North American plot of land, before there were plots separating land, was dominated by First Nation residents, two of whom we see undergoing their own courtship and life cycle together.
“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 rectangle in one corner might reveal a detail from whatever was happening that moment in the 1700s, or 1947, when Richard’s parents bought the house that wasn’t there in the 1700s. That rectangle might share the overall screen with one or two other mini-frames of action or inaction.
Benjamin Franklin makes several brief appearances. The grand house we spy through the ever-present living room window has its own stories to relay. The novel does not favor one set of characters, most of them residents of the house, over another. The movie version works differently, focusing largely on Richard and Margaret, and Richard’s surly father, played by Paul Bettany, and his bright, busy and finally stroke-addled mother, played by Kelly Reilly.
Hanks and Wright, along with the rest of the cast, undergo makeovers throughout. They’re de-aged or aged-up by means of artificial intelligence software from Metaphysic Studios. Zemeckis has been in the vanguard of digital effects for most of his career. How do the actors look here? Well, better than Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci looked as young men in “The Irishman.” But the aggressive deep-fake nature of “Here,” its actors’ faces overlaid with expensively finessed existing footage of Hanks and Wright at much younger ages, compounds the hermetic diorama vibe. Also, was there something in the way these performances were delivered, with near-immediate playback visualization of the deep-fakery, that led to some aggressive overacting? Watching “Here,” you wouldn’t know Bettany’s ever been any good, in any circumstance.
Also, the tone’s off, which is a directorial matter. McGuire’s graphic novel is a transporting wonder of dry wit and plaintive reflection, free from thesis statements beyond Ben Franklin’s observation (so McGuire imagines) that “life has a flair for rhyming events.” The movie lunges for your tear ducts and your heartstrings; the narrative hopscotch won’t cooperate and it’s not really what McGuire had in mind. At all.
Somehow, a handful of simple interactions between the older versions of Hanks and Wright cut through all that. Now and then a line comes along that sticks, quietly, as when Richard realizes he has lived, George Bailey “It’s a Wonderful Life”-style, preoccupied with money and worrying about “every damn thing.” And the ending, however shameless, works. But the book’s melancholy spareness has been replaced by a “Here” existing somewhere in a pristine, remote suburb we’ll call Uncanny Valley Falls, a few miles away from real life.
“Here” — 2 stars (out of 4)
MPA rating: PG-13 (for thematic material, some suggestive material, brief strong language and smoking)
Running time: 1:45
How to watch: Premieres in theaters Oct. 31
Michael Phillips is a Tribune critic.
