A nostalgic experiment that doesn’t quite hit home

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Today is Friday, October 1st.

Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day.

Good morning. I’m Myrna Brown.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher.

Coming next on The World and Everything in It: a new movie tries to tap into audience nostalgia while at the same time offering something they haven’t seen before.

Here’s arts and culture editor Collin Garbarino to talk about Here, debuting in theaters this weekend.

COLLIN GARBARINO: The marketing campaign for the new movie Here boasts: “From the writer, director, and stars of Forrest Gump.” Director Robert Zemeckis, who won an Academy Award for Forrest Gump, reunites with screenwriter Eric Roth, who also won an Academy Award for Forrest Gump, and actors Tom Hanks and Robin Wright. Oh, did I forget to mention that Tom Hanks won an Academy Award for Forrest Gump as well? In an interview Wright expressed how excited she was when Zemeckis called her with the idea.

ROBIN WRIGHT: Bob, I would do anything with all of you again. We’re getting the band back together. Come on!

You can tell right away that Here shares some of its DNA with Forrest Gump. A central gimmick undergirds the story. And the film relies heavily on Americana nostalgia, especially for the boomer generation.

Here depicts the lives of the various inhabitants of one particular place through time. We see a Native American couple living in a woodland. We see a stately colonial home occupied by a loyalist during the American Revolution. Then a couple of families occupy the spot in the early 20th century. But the bulk of the narrative follows the Young family, who buy a house on the spot right after World War II.

Paul Bettany plays Al Young, a veteran looking to start life with his new bride Rose, played by Kelly Reilly. Soon they have a baby boy named Richard, who will grow up into a young man played by Tom Hanks. And then Richard falls in love with Robin Wright’s Margaret.

RICHARD: Hey, dad. I’d like you to meet Margaret.

AL: Nice to meet you, Margaret.

MARGARET: Nice to meet you, Mr. Young.

Opportunities are scarce for the young couple so they live with Richard’s parents, raising their own daughter in the same house Richard grew up in. The narrative jumps back and forth through time, but the bulk of the action takes place during the 60s, 70s, and 80s with the home’s radio and television setting the vibe with nostalgia-driven needledrops.

We see Al and Rose, and then Richard and Margaret, go from newlyweds to elderly and infirm. It’s the kind of movie that shamelessly pulls on the audience’s heartstrings.

RICHARD: This was our home. We lived here.

Remember when flashback scenes in movies used to use different actors for the younger version of characters? Through the magic of computers, Tom Hanks plays Richard all the way from 18 to 80. It’s the kind of thing that wasn’t possible even just a few years ago. In an interview director Robert Zemeckis talks about the technology.

ROBERT ZEMECKIS: We now have a tool that allows a really great actor like Tom Hanks or actress like Robin Wright to perform their characters as young people, and we can digitally put youth makeup on them.

Going into the film, I had my doubts as to how well the de-aging technology would work, but it seems to have improved quite a bit since Harrison Ford wore a young face for Indiana Jones 5 last year. The young Tom Hanks was especially convincing. The young Robin Wright didn’t look like her 18-year-old self, but I didn’t find it too distracting. I actually found Paul Bettany’s looks more distracting. Bettany’s something of an old soul, so his movements felt convincing enough as his character aged, but he never seemed to age as fast as the other characters. And thinking about the actors’ real ages pulled me out of the story. Bettany and Reilly are 53 and 47 respectively, playing the older generation to Hanks, who’s 68, and Wright, who’s 58.

RICHARD: Time sure does fly, doesn’t it?

MARGARET: It sure does.

But the use of de-aging technology is only part of the gimmick. When I said the entire movie takes place in one spot, I meant it. The camera stays fixed for the film’s entire runtime, with the house sort of appearing and changing as the story moves back and forth through time. Here’s Zemeckis again.

ROBERT ZEMECKIS: I always like to bend the form. I always like to bend the art of cinema in ways that I have never seen before.

He’s certainly done that. The audience essentially stares at one living room that morphs and changes over hundreds of years. The perspective never shifts or changes. It’s a big swing for Zemeckis to depart from traditional filmmaking technique. Does it pay off?

Well… I don’t know. The gimmick starts to wear thin after a while… Maybe there’s a reason movies aren’t filmed like stage plays. And, to be honest, the story isn’t really interesting enough. The storyline dealing with Richard’s family feels like we’re watching a stranger’s home movies. Something entertaining might happen every now and then, but do you want to spend an hour and a half like that? The flashbacks to previous generations are even worse because they just pad the runtime without adding anything meaningful.

On the whole, Here isn’t really a successful movie. Perhaps the die-hard fans of Forrest Gump will enjoy this quirky glimpse at American life, but sometimes when the band gets back together for that reunion tour the show isn’t as good as we remembered.

MARGARET: I could spend the rest of my life here.

I’m Collin Garbarino.

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