Review here: A fixed camera on one family gives zero depth

Recently, a film director Robert Zemeckis was a somewhat incomprehensible number. The director of such beloved films as Back to the Future, Forrest Gump, Banished, Death Becomes Her, and Who Framed Roger Rabbit has made almost as many duds as hits, if you also check out Polar express”, “Beowulf”, “Welcome to Marven” and “Pinocchio”. An experimenter obsessed with special effects and the dramatic power they can bring to film, Zemeckis is always trying new things, especially with motion capture technology. It doesn’t always work: many of these projects drift into an unattractive uncanny valley. Despite his several attempts, he hasn’t quite gotten there yet.

In his new intergenerational family drama Here , based on Richard McGuire’s 2014 graphic novel (expanded from a six-page comic book published in the comic anthology Raw in 1989), the experiment is narrative itself, family history. spanning generations—and centuries—it’s all told from one fixed point of view. In his formally inventive graphic novel, McGuire used frames within frames to visually represent different time periods within a single panel.

Zemeckis retains the frame-within-frame conceit as a transitional element in the film version of Here , but the plot itself is more about time jumps, keeping the camera still. This space is home to many residents, from a pre-Columbian Native American couple (Joel Ulett and Danny McCallum) to a young Victorian family (Michelle Dockery and Gwilym Lee) who move into their modest colonial home, and then, the inventor of the La- Z-Boy (David Finn) and his sizzling wife (Ophelia Lovibond) who take over the house. There’s also a modern-day black family (Nicholas Pinnock, Nikki Amuka-Bird, and Cash Vanderpuye) fighting the COVID-19 pandemic and the Black Lives Matter movement.

But the story focuses mostly on the family that occupies the house for most of the 20th century: World War II veteran Al (Paul Bettany), his wife Rose (Kelly Reilly), and then their son Richard (Tom Hanks) and his wife Margaret (Robin Wright). And yes, Hanks and Wright have been digitally aged—we first see them as teenagers—and no, it doesn’t work at all (there’s something really weird going on around Hanks’ aged mouth). Sure, the trio of Hanks, Wright, and Zemeckis make for a “Forrest Gump” reunion gimmick, but why should we age Hanks when his real-life sons, Colin and Truman, are at home? Even Wright has a daughter Dylan Penn who looks like the actor.

“Here” also has the Gambian character of major historical events intertwined with personal stories: Benjamin Franklin (Keith Bartlett) and his son William (Daniel Betts) occupy a colonial estate across the street; pregnancy announced as The Beatles appear on The Ed Sullivan Show; and seemingly everything important happens in this godforsaken living room, including weddings, births and divorces.

The “Here” story surrounding Richard and Margaret is relatable, entirely predictable, and utterly boring. They get pregnant as teenagers, move in with his family, he quits art to get a real job, she wants her own space, etc. Ostensibly their story is about the ups and downs of life, but in the end it turns into a rather sad tale of two people searching for too long for what makes them happy, and for her, it’s a way out of that damned house, although if she ever left, here there would be no “here”.

The change in ownership over the years means estate agents come and go throughout the film, and by the time the credits roll, you half expect a home insurance company logo to appear, because that’s what the whispers look like movie: homeowner’s insurance commercial. Frankly, there are 30-second clips that have caused more tears and emotions than the flat, pointless “Here”.

Richard and Margaret’s daughter Vanessa (Zsa Zsa Zemeckis) disappears around the age of 16 and is never seen again, which is a shame because the more interesting story is not the baby boomer parents’ story, but perhaps how their Gen-X daughter or Zoomer grandchildren can benefit from their generational wealth. “Here” does not want to dig into any nuances around this. But perhaps property values ​​are exactly where the mind wanders when the story being played out is so insidious and stale.

This year saw other daring projects from older directors experimenting with cinematic form and function on their own terms, including Francis Ford Coppola. “Megapolis”, and Kevin Costner “Horizon”. While the effort was laudable, unfortunately, the results all fell flat, and “Here” is no exception.

Kathy Walsh is a film critic for the Tribune News Service.