‘Here‘ (2024) is a technological marvel. There are directors from whom I expect something like this, one of them would be Steven Spielberg, and then Robert Zemeckis, the director of this film, whose movies Spielberg produced on many occasions. The film uses a generative artificial intelligence technology called Metaphysic Live, which is so new that this film probably could not have been made a year ago and which will probably be surpassed by something newer and better next year. This field is evolving very quickly and I think ‘resistance is futile’ ( (c) Star Trek), just as the protests and boycotts against all innovations in cinema, from the introduction of sound to computer-generated effects and stunts, were futile. That said, special effects and their results, no matter how spectacular, do not guarantee either quality or emotion. As a viewer, I go to the cinema and choose to see a film because it interests me and involves me, because it tells me a story and introduces me to new characters that I care about. From this point of view, at least for me, the impact of ‘Here‘ was minor.
The use of AI technology for the characters’ time travel is not the only creative cinematic element of this film. The other very visible one is the fact that the camera is (with one exception) fixed, in the same space and the same angle throughout the entire film. We travel through 65 million years of history in time but we are visually fixed on the same piece of land, and in the scenes from 1900 onwards in the few dozen square meters of the living room of a typical American house with large windows facing a typical American street. The narrative is nonlinear. In fact, there are about 8 or 9 stories (depending on whether we count the one with the dinosaurs) of different generations of the inhabitants of the place, of their destinies with births and deaths, loves and separations, pains of growing up and old age. One of them is the dominant one, that of Richard (born in the house built in 1900) and Margaret – a couple of baby-boomers, now reaching the age of memories and forgetting. The scenes alternate and the transition between them is made inventively, with changes of setsand objects that define in time the scene that will follow.
I found the technical part to be fascinating. What a pity that this cinematic inventiveness does not come in support of a more interesting story (or stories). Robert Zemeckis, who knew so well to combine innovations with sensitivity in other films, was less inspired from this point of view in ‘Here‘. The film is an adaptation of a graphic novel by Richard McGuire, but what works well on drawings on paper doesn’t find an equal equivalent on screen. If the main story were a family drama, it could still work, perhaps, with the help of the actors, but the interwoven narrative doesn’t allow for the development of emotion. A tear has barely formed in the corner of the eye and the next time jump is already happening. By the time we return to the continuation of the story, the tear has dried. The imbalance between the main story and the rest of the narratives is all too obvious, some of which don’t manage to sketch more than a cliché about the characters and their eras. Perhaps if the number of parallel plans had been reduced to three or four, but developed more evenly, the result would have been better. Tom Hanks is formidable, and almost all of his transformations into the past remind us of his youth or previous adulthood movies. Robin Wright is less differentiated in her past incarnations. I don’t know if it’s the AI software or the fact that Robin Wright is just a good actress, while Tom Hanks is an exceptional actor. Alan Silvestri‘s music stylistically adapts to the historical moments in which the different scenes take place. My recommendation is to see ‘Here‘. Some of you may even like the story. The rest of us are waiting for future films with AI effects, confident that masterpieces of the genre will also appear.