Zemeckis’ Here: a film that chronicles the 1900s through a single room

Here is a film that unfolds entirely within a single frame. Directed by Robert Zemeckis, it stars Tom Hanks and Robin Wright – the same trio in Forrest Gump – in a narrative told from a single fixed perspective. Imagine a camera planted in one spot during prehistoric times, capturing millennia of life, construction, and transformation around it. The film chronicles the lives of those who come and go, offering a sweeping yet intimate portrait of humanity’s passage through time. Inspired by Richard McGuire’s graphic novel, the movie incorporates the visual language of comic book panels to seamlessly transition between eras.

The goal is to weave the story of one family – from their arrival at the house in the parents’ generation to their departure in the grandchildren’s – into the greater history of humanity. The magic lies in portraying epic themes through a limited perspective: 90% of the film remains focused on the same spot in the living room. Time jumps from the 1920s to the Native American era, then to the 1970s, the present, and even Benjamin Franklin’s time, capturing multiple storylines within this small plot of land.

Furniture takes center stage: interior design and the way the characters furnish the space tells a lot about them. A 19th-century bourgeois family’s décor mirrors their fear of adventure, while the chaotic, fashionable décor full of plants and art deco details of the 1920s couple is wild and modern, just like them. These transitions from one decade to the other highlight the change and how the differences and the way certain styles and decisions – even about spaces – reflect the time the characters live in. Especially some of them.

Many storylines remain fleeting: a solid couple invent a new kind of armchair, two Native Americans meet and have a child in the forest, Benjamin Franklin faces family strife, and an African American family moves in during the present, another family moves there in the early 1900s because it’s close to the airport. But the main story follows a family from the postwar era into the early 2000s, reflecting the journey of the baby boomer generation – to which Zemeckis, Hanks, and Wright belong. This storyline begins with the parents settling into the house after the war. It follows the father’s career struggles, the son (played by Hanks) growing up, finding love, getting married, the life in that house until old age, and eventually the parents passing away. It’s a tale of disappointments and defeats, betrayed expectations and no triumph.

The biggest and most and important part speaks through interior design. Throughout the film, the characters are often shown tiding up, remodeling, changing something, or simply decorating, setting the table for a big dinner. The whole movie seems to be taking place during the redecoration of the space and the change of furniture arrangement. Even the act of replacing an old sofa with another one becomes a metaphor for personal frustration and the desire to replace the generation that came before to create a new independent family unit. That traditional, floral sofa opposes the new, modern leather one in both design and concept. And that modular sofa becomes the center of many events throughout the years.

Here is a deeply sentimental film about the passage of time, lost opportunities, and the regrets that accumulate as life rushes by, but also about the relentless forward march of events catches the characters off guard – they believe they have plenty of time, only to find themselves aging too quickly. The evolving styles of the living room furniture mark, more than the characters, as a time capsule, the time period we are witnessing. In some cases, the scenes are characterized by those living in them, for example, when Tom Hanks’s father lies bedridden in that same living room, now turned into a makeshift hospital room. 
 

There is both a visual and conceptual depth to this narrative. Originating from a graphic novel, the story is inherently designed to communicate through images, making it easy to see how the furniture acts like a costume, reflecting the tone, era, and context of each moment. While the actors and their characters are in the foreground, the true story is told by the furniture – one that encapsulates the history of an entire nation.

At first glance, the film appears to portray the cycles of birth, growth, and death within families, capturing the triumphs and defeats of their lives. But in doing so, Here also tells the story of the birth and evolution of the United States itself – beginning with the Native Americans and Benjamin Franklin – though families. The narrative weaves through a pivotal, turbulent phase: the 20th century, a time when the United States reached the height of its power and potential as a protagonist, only to witness its dreams unravel. The promises of prosperity and progress that defined the early 20th century failed to materialize for many by the century’s end. The American Dream – the idea that anyone can achieve success through talent and determination – proves wrong for the characters in this story.

From glimpses of the colonial mansion once inhabited by Franklin, to evolving Christmas traditions, the ever-changing models of televisions, and the alternating technologies and design trends, the film uses an exceptional way to say that the history of furniture throughout the 1900s is one of the many ways to explore the lives, dreams, and inner worlds of its characters. Ironically, the only characters in the film who achieve tangible success do so by inventing the La-Z-Boy recliner – a real-life piece of furniture that epitomizes the American entrepreneurial spirit, relentless drive for reinvention, the ambition to start from the scratch of great sellers and the inventors of the last century.