Here

Best known for films such as the Back to the Future trilogy, Forrest Gump, and Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Here finds Robert Zemeckis reuniting with Gump colleagues such as Tom Hanks, Robert Wright, cinematographer Don Burgess, and composer Alan Silvestri for the first time since that mid-90s classic.

Yes’ 1971 song “I’ve Seen All Good People” plays at the outset, which sees us move quickly from a young couple moving into their new home to retirement age, only for the scene to venture back to prehistoric times. The conceit for the film is to explore a specific place, and we see the progression from mammalian evolution to the enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution, and finally the building of the house the film is mainly set in. There are also myriad scenes involving the inhabiting family over a span of decades.

Although not well reviewed (according to Rotten Tomatoes), one must at least accord Zemeckis the audacity to try bold and relatively new ideas—it would be easy to resuscitate any of the aforementioned franchises he helmed, but he resists that temptation for the sake of something new.

In terms of the edit, the Yes track is more or less permitted to play out, with little in the way of interruption. It serves as a stable ballast for the hundreds (well, tens of thousands, really) of years of change the family’s plot of land goes through. There’s equal amounts of awe and fatalism when zooming out and considering so large a picture that even spending perhaps fifty years in the same place feels, in some ways, quaint and inconsequential. The choice of “I’ve Seen All Good People” works pretty well in conveying this on multiple levels. First is the fact that those more familiar with the track are likely themselves of retirement age or older. Secondly, the quality of the music is both fantastical and grounded, dealing as it does with time.

Notably, this version comes with a few orchestral flourishes, such as added strings—very common treatment when licensing a song for use. Moreover, there’s also the inclusion of a ticking motif in the percussion in the tempo of the song, which makes particular sense here, given the subject of time.

Here is set to be widely released November 27 2024.

— Curtis Perry