Here Movie 2024 Review
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Some who have heard about the film may have the mistaken impression that "Here" is set solely inside the living room of the house across several decades. That is only partially true. Although Here is primarily made up of interior scenes in the living room, there are many scenes in the film that take place outdoors, before the house was built in 1907. These pre-1907 exterior scenes are ultimately unnecessary and disturbing.
These pre-1907 scenes take place on the land when it was still undeveloped woodland. In 1609 and 1610, an unnamed man (played by Joel Woolett) and an unnamed woman (played by Danny McCallum), both Native American, become a couple and have a child. Their "courtship" involves the man giving the woman a handmade necklace. That's all we learn about the couple in this terribly superficial film.
We are only shown the couple's sojourn in the forest; we never see where they take refuge. We don't see their personalities. We don't see how they raise their children. We learn nothing about their tribes or communities. And we never even see them speak, because the makers of Here decided that the Native American characters in this film had to be completely silent.
Withholding the names and lines of these Native American characters feels like a condescension on the part of the filmmakers, as if showing these Native Americans for just a few moments is enough to satisfy diversity requirements. It's a surprisingly insensitive approach to diversity, and an example of how underrepresented people are often portrayed as "inferior" or "less worthy" than the demographic that gets the most screen time and dialogue in the average Hollywood studio film.
Here also includes intermittent scenes set in the 18th century, snippets of the lives of Benjamin Franklin (played by Keith Bartlett), his wife Elizabeth Franklin (played by Leslie Zemeckis), their son William Franklin (played by Daniel Betts), and William's son Billy Franklin (played by Alfie Todd). Because Here is not a biopic about the Benjamin Franklin family, these scenes seem surprisingly out of place, especially since Here does a lot of non-chronological time jumping.
In a moment, it could be scenery set inside a 20th-century house. In the next moment, you're watching what was happening in the woods before the house was built. In a scene with Benjamin Franklin's family, there's a cursory reference to the Revolutionary War. There's no history lesson to be gained from watching this movie. You can watch this movie on Afdah stream.
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