Here

Director Braden King’s Here tells the story of two travellers intersecting at a particular time and place – the time and place being modern day Armenia. Their physical travels are a MacGuffin – the film’s real focus is a metaphysical exploration: the personal journey these travellers undertake.

American cartographer Will Shephard (Ben Foster) captures his journey scientifically, exploring new boundaries, borders and images for a satellite mapping system. Gadarine (Lubna Azabal) is an expatriate Armenian, the prodigal daughter returning to photograph a homeland long left behind. He needs an interpreter, and she wants to reacquaint herself with a homeland she no longer knows.

They are both reconfiguring the world around them. Their journeys inevitably involve each other, and the journey they take together, with the possibility of separation looming on the horizon, becomes a journey neither one of them knows how to navigate well.

It is hard not to write in metaphors when describing this film, which is perhaps what screenwriters King and Dani Valent intended. Both characters are mapping a journey of physical and personal uncharted territories and, dare I say it, the map of the human heart.

There is little dialogue in the film. When it does occur, it is usually a philosophical and/or metaphorical dialogue about the experience. Peter Coyote’s poetic narrative about historical explorers arguing over their conflicting maps drive this idea and the intention behind the film, and it drives an already obvious point home.

The main problem with Here is that the metaphoric way the story is told, and its metaphysical subtexts, are all too obvious and, paradoxically, sometimes too obscure. For instance, a scene where Gadadrine is chided by her parents for being a ‘wandering artist’ contradicts the same set up a few scenes later when they show their admiration of her for living in ‘worlds they can only dream of’. It isn’t clear whether the previous scene is one of her imagination, the anticipated conversation upon her arrival home, or whether it really happened. If the filmmakers intended it to be an imagined conversation, it isn’t well executed and it is confusing.

Since there is little dialogue, we’re left with beautiful sweeping shots of the Armenian countryside, roads travelled and villages visited along the way. When actions should speak louder than words, for most part, they don’t.  

Some viewers may enjoy a ponderous, slow moving meditation on travel as a metaphor for the personal journey, complete with sweeping vistas, all 121 minutes of it. For this viewer, the journey is unsatisfying.

2 out of 5 stars

Here

Director: Braden King

USA, 2011, 121 mins.

Available on DVD through Madman Entertainment

DVD extras: Interview with director Braden King; Theatrical Trailer; Madman Propaganda

Rated M