THE “WORLD’S” OPINION – NOT TO BE MISSED
Who has never asked themselves the question: who was there before, in this apartment, in this kitchen where I am? And who, again before? And what was there before the building was built? And even before?
From this dizzying temporal speculation, the designer Richard McGuire drew Here (IciGallimard, 2015), beautiful graphic novel to tears decorated with the prestigious Fauve d’or at the Angoulême Festival in 2016. Over a hundred pages, the novel stirs up the temporal layers, from the appearance of life on earth until to the most distant future (the year 22175), remaining fixed on a single place seen from the same angle, the « here » of the title: the living room of a house in New Jersey, where the artist grew up.
That Robert Zemeckis, an old glory still active, managed to finance and adapt this graphic novel is either a miracle or a very happy bug in the Hollywood machine. We had lost the 72-year-old filmmaker in the limbo of commissioned films, at the helm of bloated blockbusters for children (Holy witchesin 2020, Pinocchioin 2022). The mad scientist of special effects tried in vain to leave his mark on it, this mixture of impeccably executed entertainment and technological magic, of which he was one of the most exciting precursors. We must revisit the real plastic madness of Who wants Roger Rabbit’s skin? (1988) or Death suits you so well (1992).
Read the portrait (2016) | Article reserved for our subscribers Robert Zemeckis, virtuoso of “techno” cinema
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Here is, in this respect, a sort of comeback: in short, an arthouse film in due form. Personal, imperfect, very moving, experimental: a film which constantly dialogues with its spectator, plays with them, respects them greatly. First by challenging it with its device, taken from the graphic novel: a (quasi-) fixed shot of an hour and forty-five minutes in a living room, and the story of a family over three generations. Each time, the same apartment visits, marital arguments and Christmas meals, empty or full time, fifty or hundreds of years apart.
From dinosaurs to… Tom Hanks
And then, time flows back to the Big Bang, and back in the other direction: ice age, Native Americans, the first settlers building a house there, etc. Lost in this sumptuous temporal millefeuille, we go, tit for tat, from dinosaurs to… Tom Hanks, perfectly rejuvenated by the de-aging (we barely notice the rejuvenation technology, we got used to it), moving into the house with his wife. Hereor the wedding of the ordinary American and the conceptual – Norman Rockwell meeting Alain Resnais.
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