By Seth Lukas Hynes
Here
Starring Tom Hanks, Robin Wright and Paul Bettany
Rated M
4.25/5
Based on the graphic novel by Richard McGuire, Here is an affecting, visually-ambitious drama with some worrying technology behind it.
Here is a touching tapestry of love, worry, compromise and turbulent family life, and reunites Tom Hanks and Robin Wright for the first time since Forrest Gump.
Shot with one unmoving camera angle, Here has a mosaic structure not unlike Cloud Atlas, jumping across time to portray several families living in this single room or plot of land, with comic panel-like inserts to juxtapose different eras and draw fun or poignant parallels.
The primary focus is Richard (Hanks) and Margaret’s (Wright) family: Richard is a dedicated husband and father with an overcautious nature; Margaret, Richard’s wife, is comfortable but stifled as her dreams go unfulfilled; Al (Paul Bettany), Richard’s veteran father, is a good man suffering from a bad temper and alcoholism.
The themes and dialogue can be heavy-handed, with a slow, almost leisurely pace, but this is true-to-life; family conflict can be extremely unsubtle, and Here captures the frustrated, struggling but net-happy ebb-and-flow of so many lives.
The extensive de-ageing visual effects overall look very convincing and only occasionally dip into the Uncanny Valley, and were achieved with Metaphysic Live generative AI (essentially making it “Deepfake: The Movie”).
While Metaphysic professes to a highly-ethical, consent-based approach to AI production, this is just one facet of the entertainment industry recklessly barrelling forward with AI, and we need to make sure films like Here don’t normalise more unscrupulous uses of AI (Metaphysic reanimating Ian Holm for Alien: Romulus, for example).
Here is playing in most Victorian cinemas, and I seem to be one of the only film critics in the world who thoroughly enjoyed it.
