Here Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		5.0
Audio		4.5
Extras		2.0
Overall		4.0

Here Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Kenneth Brown January 21, 2025

I've been thinking a lot about memory lately. My mother was recently diagnosed with early-stage dementia. We've known it was coming, or at least suspected as much. I didn't want it to be true, but suddenly there it was, staring me in the face; the word "dementia" still packing a punch when it came. It's since thrown my mind backwards in time, remembering days when she was younger, sharper, more attuned to the things around her. I can only imagine what it was like for her to hear it. And then along came Robert Zemeckis's Here, an ill-timed movie I was certainly not prepared to watch. I found it to be a bit too maudlin, melodramatic... then suddenly one of the most profound and meaningful movies I've seen in months. I cried. Hard. Not only because it hit so close to home on several occasions, but because through its winding road of families and moments, happy and sad, it stumbled into things so poignantly human that I couldn't help but feel, and feel deeply. All at once it struck me how fleeting our lives are and how much they're to be cherished while we have the opportunity; the people, the places, the holidays, the loves, the losses. Here ceased to be a movie and became something much more.

Told uniquely from a single, static camera shot -- without any pans, zooms or other traditional cinematic techniques -- Here tells the story of a place over the course of millennia. We watch as a meteorite lays waste to most life. As an ice age settles in for countless years. As green returns to the planet, and trees give way to forests which give way to civilization. We watch as Native Americans hunt deer, as settlers construct early homes, as houses are built, streets are paved, horse-drawn carriages glide by, and automobiles take to the streets. All the while we watch a single house being constructed around our vantage point. A foundation is laid. Walls erected. Hardwood floors laid in place. And a large window installed facing a grand mansion across the street. From there we begin to meet the families, the generations of people who move in and move out, find success and suffer failure, contend with life and death in the span of decades. We watch as they come together and fall apart, sometimes not even knowing those who've came before or meeting those who will come after. And we see all this through nonlinear timelines; panels that fade in and out, sometimes bridging the centuries and showing how these many people's lives overlap and interconnect.

Each family's story is told chronologically, although the film moves from timeline to timeline, story to story, telling a decidedly nonchronological narrative. We meet an unnamed Native American couple (Joel Oulette and Dannie McCallum) of the Lenni-Lenape tribe; Benjamin Franklin's son William (Daniel Betts); pilot John Harter (Gwilym Lee) and his wife, Pauline (Michelle Dockery), who dreads the day her husband won't come home; La-Z-Boy inventor Leo Beekman (David Fynn) and his 1940s pin-up model wife Stella (Ophelia Lovibond); WWII veteran Al Young (Paul Bettany) and his dear wife Rose (Kelly Reilly), who buy the house in 1945; the Young's children Ricky (Callum Macreadie, Finn Guegan and Teddy Russell), Elizabeth (Leslie Zemeckis, Beau Gadsdon and Lauren McQueen) and Jimmy (Harry Marcus, Diego Scott and Albie Salter); little Ricky grows up to be painter-turned-salesman Richard (Tom Hanks), who marries his pregnant girlfriend Margaret (Robin Wright) in the living room; Richard and Margaret's daughter Vanessa (Zsa Zsa Zemeckis); COVID-era family Devon (Nicholas Pinnock) and Helen Harris (Nikki Amuka-Bird) and their teenager son Justin (Cache Vandernuve); on and on and on.

Zemeckis employs aging FX to overall effective ends. Hanks and Wright sometimes look like plastic dolls, particularly when laughing, but such moments are short-lived as the illusion generally holds its own throughout the film. Early peoples (in the 17th and 18th centuries) are also rendered completely in CG for some reason, which is a shame. Again, though, the distraction is gone almost as quickly as it comes, leaving us to what matters: the stories of the families we meet in slow succession. The nonlinear script makes immersion difficult at first but soon proves its mettle and meaning, deriving purpose from the hops between timelines. It's more than a clever gimmick, it groups joys and sorrows together across the decades in a manner that prevents the film from bobbling and wobbling from act to act. The performances are altogether good, with Hanks and Wright delivering particularly excellent work. Bettany overplays his hand a touch but otherwise any issues encountered trace to the screenplay rather than the actors.

Don't be surprised if it all strikes you as disjointed for a chunk of its runtime. It wasn't until the third act that I began to respond, and even then it wasn't until the final half-hour or so that I finally began to understand what Zemeckis had been driving at for the better part of two hours. That realization comes with some weight as the film shifts from light and airy to heavy and heart-wrenching, but that's life when death is a possibility. And it's the families' losses that hit the hardest and resonate the most. It's also breathtaking how intentional and meticulous the single setting becomes. Rather than drum up excuses to keep the camera focused on a living room, we're only privy to the small and occasionally monumental events that occur in front of the camera, which Zemeckis and co-writer Eric Roth (working from Richard McGuire's graphic novel) populate with smart storytelling and contrivances that don't unfold like contrivances. The Native American story is perhaps the weakest of the bunch, if only because the space before us in that time period is little more than an empty field rather than an early domicile, making the things that occur there feel like the most conveniently penned. That extends into a prevailing sentimentality that won't work for more cynical cinephiles but will be more than sufficiently satisfying to those who don't mind bringing along a Kleenex box. Zemeckis does love to pluck heartstrings, doesn't he?

Here Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Here is a lovely film matched with an equally lovely 1080p/AVC-encoded video transfer from Sony. The only surprise is that it isn't also being released in 4K. Cinematographer Don Burgess's palette is striking and never shies away from color. Rich mahogany-wood reds, vibrant splashes of blue and yellow, warm earthtones, lush greens and browns, and deep, inky black levels fill the image with life. Contrast is excellent, as is clarity, with crisp detailing at every turn. Edges are sharp and naturally defined, fine textures are beautiful and revealing, delineation is spot on, and the only complaint I can come up with is that the high-definition presentation makes it that much easier to spot some of the seams in the CG and de-aging FX (neither of which should be levied against the encode). I also didn't catch sight of any artifacting, banding or other errant issues. The encode is given plenty of room to work and does so without incident. I was thoroughly pleased with the results.

Here Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Sony's DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 surround track is also terrific. While Alan Silvestri's sweeping score is overused, it sounds magnificent. Instrumentation is spread orchestrally across the entire soundfield, and swells and crescendos are bolstered by low-end power and heft. There are little other uses for the LFE channel that aren't of the furniture-moving or meteor-striking variety, but what's here is handled well. The rear speakers have a lot to do, though, with directional effects and ambient touches aplenty. Scenes based in nature are a playground of insects, birds and wind, while interior sequences are more subtle but no less effective. Channel pans are exceedingly smooth and the only distraction I encountered was Tom Hanks's voice coming out of a teen's mouth, most definitely from the right-front speaker. Chances are it was more the shock of hearing Hanks but it nevertheless seemed especially stilted. Otherwise, dialogue is always as it should be: clear, intelligible and carefully placed in the soundfield. The track is wonderfully immersive and makes you feel as if you're a ghost standing in the middle of an all too real living room, listening as people pass to and fro, with events unfolding with precise sound design and attention to detail.

Here Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• How We Got Here (HD, 20 minutes) - A lengthy production featurette with Zemeckis.

• Deleted Scenes (HD, 9 minutes) - Nine deleted scenes, all of which could have been easily retained but were likely cut for pacing and tone.

• Sony Previews (HD)

Here Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Here isn't a perfect film but it is a moving one. With a killer premise and effective composition, it tells a story bigger and broader than it has any business doing with the level of poignancy it does. I was quite satisfied with the experience, though your mileage may vary depending how close it hits to home. Sony's Blu-ray release is even better, at least in terms of its AV presentation which is bolstered by a top tier BD video transfer and a strong DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 surround track. Additional supplements would have made things that much more worthwhile, but the extras on tap aren't bad.