Tom Hanks and Robin Wright reunite with Robert Zemeckis

Robert Zemeckis clearly has a soft spot for time – past, present and Back to the future. With a filmography that also includes films like The Polar Express and especially its Oscar-winning Best Picture Forrest GumpThe director loves mixing the latest filmmaking technologies with relatable stories that play with our perception of life over time. He delves deeply into this topic in his ambitious 2014 adaptation of Richard McGuire's graphic novel Herewhich is the case not Send its hundred-plus-year-old cast of characters back in time, let's rather Time come to them on a single piece of land, later a house, throughout the entire 20th century, a little before and a little after. The great French director Claude LeLouch did something similar in the great 1974 love story And now my lovein which the chance meeting of a couple is preceded at first glance by a century of different generations that we meet, whose diverse lives all lead to this one moment.

Here is based on the idea of ​​focusing the audience's gaze on a specific place in the universe as we watch people come and go through triumph, happiness, sadness, heartache and most of all Family The action takes place in a house, starting in the early 20th century and continuing to the present day. Actually, the film begins briefly in the age of dinosaurs, moves on to Native American land, to none other than Benjamin Franklin and his brood, and finally to that one house where Zemeckis has boldly moved his camera into a stable position to bring order to capture all these people going about their daily lives front from us, almost as if we were watching a play. In fact, I thought further Here would make a great piece of theater, with the possibility of breathtaking scene changes on a set as the actors come and go in constant action.

But instead Zemeckis and his Forrest Gump Oscar-winning co-writer Eric Roth has gone the cinematic route and, even with a static camera, manages to keep the whole thing visually interesting by constantly having panels of different moments pop up on the screen, detailing the scenes, time periods and characters changed as they are enveloped in this tapestry of humanity.

On the way in 1908 we meet Pauline (Downton Abbeyis Michelle Dockery), a well-endowed woman who worries about her aviation-obsessed husband. We also meet a couple living in a crowded version of the house who stumble upon a multi-million dollar marketing idea that becomes a success La-Z-Boy Lounger. At a later date, an African-American family moves in. But the main focus is ultimately on our stars and their extended family, including Al (Paul Bettany), who returns traumatized from World War II and starts a family with housewife Rose (Kelly Reilly), a typical post-war marriage with her son. Richard (Hanks), who we see growing up, finds teenage love with his schoolmate Margaret (Wright). She becomes pregnant and so the two marry at a very young age and live with Al and Rose, a situation that becomes tense as they have to raise daughter Vanessa and earn money to support a family, while balancing Richard's artistic ambitions and Margaret's own dreams must be set aside for adventures beyond this house.

It takes a while to get into the groove Herewhich imagines what the walls of a house with a revolving door might see from people passing through them in different eras. It took me some time to get used to what at first seems a little unconventional, taking us back and forth into these different lives but never getting to know them enough to really get involved in their travails – until to the second half of the film. when Hanks and Wright's story takes center stage. Both stars were superbly digitally aged to play their younger selves, and in other places they were made up to appear older, and in other places no makeup treatment was required. They are flawless, even if their own marriage follows fairly predictable paths: staying together, breaking up, frustrations, health problems, etc Things of life. In between, the television—from a black-and-white model from the '50s to a color set to a big-screen TV on the wall—tells us where these families are in the scheme of things, as does Thanksgiving dinner staple the movie always back. Outside the large window, the scenes change as we see horse-drawn carriages giving way to cars and a busy neighborhood in the background of the main action.

Using these panels to constantly shake things up, some big, some smaller, and focus on where we're going next in this house, that's a production designer's dream job, and PD Ashley Lamont keeps it going Run. Actually that one House is as big a star as anyone in it. Editor Jesse Goldsmith deserves a lot of credit for the very tricky editing of the film, with all the panels depicting a more modest version of what Norman Jewison used The Thomas Crown Affair. This 1968 film was all about the style; Zemeckis wants the device to keep the plot moving and integrate the individual stories. His frequent composer Alan Silvestri, another Gump Veteran, delivers a lively, uplifting score that helps.

Aside from Hanks and Wright, who give excellent performances as usual, Bettany and to a lesser extent Reilly are the only supporting actors to have any significant roles, particularly Bettany as a man driven to drink too much and filled with regret that he has doesn't want to give up and move on to his son.

Here is a noble experiment and a welcome dose of originality in a year full of sequels, even if it doesn't work on every level. As for me, I tried with all my might to resist his emotional pull, but in the end I finally surrendered to him and shed more than a tear as I thought about how our place on this earth is constantly changing and how we somehow have to hold on to what is good in this life, even in the darkest times.

And in the sense of HereAs I sat at the legendary Chinese Theater at the AFI Fest debut last night, I thought about all the incredible classic films that have played in this single venue throughout its storied Hollywood history and wondered what those stories are this Walls could tell of past premieres.

Miramax and ImageMovers producers include Zemeckis, Derek Hogue, Jack
Rapke and Bill Block.

Title: Here
Festival: AFI Fest
Distributor: Sony Pictures (TriStar)
Release date: November 1, 2024
Director: Robert Zemeckis
Screenwriters: Eric Roth and Robert Zemeckis
Pour: Tom Hanks, Robin Wright, Paul Bettany, Kelly Reilly, Michelle Dockery, Nikki Amuka-Bird
Evaluation: PG-13
Duration: 1 hour 44 minutes