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The New York Times
April13, 2012 Friday
Late Edition - Final
Loving, and Maybe Exploiting, Armenia
By STEPHEN HOLDEN
There are vistas in Braden King's metaphysical road movie, ''Here,''
that are so beautiful you want to step through the screen and
disappear into the Armenian landscape where much of it was filmed. In
the most evocative scene, the camera slowly pans across pastures
framed by distant mountains in which cattle graze amid a sprawling
grid of power lines.
In another startling juxtaposition of pastoral and technological
images, a traveler in Armenia uses a Google map to go from outer space
to the heart of San Francisco in seconds. What does it imply that
nowadays you can bask in an Armenian field and visit an American city
at exactly the same moment? The trains of thought stirred up by the
film's contemplation of what is here and what is there -- and where
you are -- are endless and stimulating. And the movie is embellished
with spectacularly beautiful, enigmatic bursts of abstract imagery.
More problematic is an intermittent narrator (Peter Coyote) who
meditates in poetic language on the conflicting aesthetics of science
and exploration and on the notion that ''truth is conjecture.'' If
what he says is helpful in deciphering the film's aesthetics, it also
sounds grandiose. And as the movie advances, you discover that the
ideas voiced by the narrator are embedded in scenes that need no
further explication. This is a film that begins with a printed
announcement: ''The story is asleep. It dreams.'' Whatever that means.
The scientist and the artistic explorer are embodied by Ben Foster
(''The Messenger'') and Lubna Azabal (''Incendies''), an attractive
couple with chemistry. Mr. Foster plays Will, an American
satellite-mapping engineer whose job is to match objects on the ground
to satellite photos. Ms. Azabal's character, Gadarine, is an Armenian
expatriate photographer who has returned to her homeland from abroad
following a successful Paris exhibition of her Polaroid snapshots.
After they meet by chance in a restaurant where she translates his
breakfast order into Armenian, Gadarine becomes Will's traveling
companion on a quest to photograph the rapidly changing country that
she left behind. She also serves as Will's de facto interpreter, and
the two become lovers.
Both are searchers, she for her past, he for the future. Remembering
his childhood growing up in a Northern California vineyard, Will
recalls taking long walks in which he tried to get lost. ''I wanted to
find the edge of the world,'' he says.
In a toast while drinking homemade vodka with some locals, he is
saluted for creating maps that ''bring wisdom to the world.'' But do
they? And is wisdom the right word? Gadarine, upon returning to her
peasant family, is treated as a prodigal daughter who is wasting her
life by not settling down and doing ''real'' work.
With its layers of weighted dialogue, ''Here'' has a lot in common
with Abbas Kiarostami's ''Certified Copy,'' a film whose intellectual
superstructure didn't preclude the emergence of vivid, quirky
personalities. The same can't be said of ''Here,'' where the ideas are
more implied than stated, and Will and Gadarine never completely break
out of their symbolic shells.
They ultimately clash, when Gadarine accuses Will of skimming the
surface of the world while gathering geographic data that will be used
for corporate exploitation of Armenian resources. In her pictures she
is trying to preserve the moment and the sense of place that his work
is helping to erase.
''Here,'' to its detriment, never builds its ideas into a cohesive
vision. The screenplay by Mr. King and Dani Valent too often wanders
off into poetic vagueness. But visually, ''Here,'' filmed by Lol
Crowley, is still a stunner. Flawed as it is, I admire it immensely.
Opens on Friday in Manhattan.
Directed by Braden King; written by Mr. King and Dani Valent; director
of photography, Lol Crowley; edited by David Barker, Andrew Hafitz and
Paul Zucker; music by Michael Krassner; production design by Richard
A. Wright; costumes by Amanda Ford; produced by Lars Knudsen and Jay
Van Hoy; released by Strand Releasing. At the IFC Center, 323 Avenue
of the Americas, at Third Street, Greenwich Village. In English and
Armenian, with English subtitles. Running time: 2 hours 6 minutes.
This film is not rated.
WITH: Ben Foster (Will Shepard) and Lubna Azabal (Gadarine Najarian).
April13, 2012 Friday
Late Edition - Final
Loving, and Maybe Exploiting, Armenia
By STEPHEN HOLDEN
There are vistas in Braden King's metaphysical road movie, ''Here,''
that are so beautiful you want to step through the screen and
disappear into the Armenian landscape where much of it was filmed. In
the most evocative scene, the camera slowly pans across pastures
framed by distant mountains in which cattle graze amid a sprawling
grid of power lines.
In another startling juxtaposition of pastoral and technological
images, a traveler in Armenia uses a Google map to go from outer space
to the heart of San Francisco in seconds. What does it imply that
nowadays you can bask in an Armenian field and visit an American city
at exactly the same moment? The trains of thought stirred up by the
film's contemplation of what is here and what is there -- and where
you are -- are endless and stimulating. And the movie is embellished
with spectacularly beautiful, enigmatic bursts of abstract imagery.
More problematic is an intermittent narrator (Peter Coyote) who
meditates in poetic language on the conflicting aesthetics of science
and exploration and on the notion that ''truth is conjecture.'' If
what he says is helpful in deciphering the film's aesthetics, it also
sounds grandiose. And as the movie advances, you discover that the
ideas voiced by the narrator are embedded in scenes that need no
further explication. This is a film that begins with a printed
announcement: ''The story is asleep. It dreams.'' Whatever that means.
The scientist and the artistic explorer are embodied by Ben Foster
(''The Messenger'') and Lubna Azabal (''Incendies''), an attractive
couple with chemistry. Mr. Foster plays Will, an American
satellite-mapping engineer whose job is to match objects on the ground
to satellite photos. Ms. Azabal's character, Gadarine, is an Armenian
expatriate photographer who has returned to her homeland from abroad
following a successful Paris exhibition of her Polaroid snapshots.
After they meet by chance in a restaurant where she translates his
breakfast order into Armenian, Gadarine becomes Will's traveling
companion on a quest to photograph the rapidly changing country that
she left behind. She also serves as Will's de facto interpreter, and
the two become lovers.
Both are searchers, she for her past, he for the future. Remembering
his childhood growing up in a Northern California vineyard, Will
recalls taking long walks in which he tried to get lost. ''I wanted to
find the edge of the world,'' he says.
In a toast while drinking homemade vodka with some locals, he is
saluted for creating maps that ''bring wisdom to the world.'' But do
they? And is wisdom the right word? Gadarine, upon returning to her
peasant family, is treated as a prodigal daughter who is wasting her
life by not settling down and doing ''real'' work.
With its layers of weighted dialogue, ''Here'' has a lot in common
with Abbas Kiarostami's ''Certified Copy,'' a film whose intellectual
superstructure didn't preclude the emergence of vivid, quirky
personalities. The same can't be said of ''Here,'' where the ideas are
more implied than stated, and Will and Gadarine never completely break
out of their symbolic shells.
They ultimately clash, when Gadarine accuses Will of skimming the
surface of the world while gathering geographic data that will be used
for corporate exploitation of Armenian resources. In her pictures she
is trying to preserve the moment and the sense of place that his work
is helping to erase.
''Here,'' to its detriment, never builds its ideas into a cohesive
vision. The screenplay by Mr. King and Dani Valent too often wanders
off into poetic vagueness. But visually, ''Here,'' filmed by Lol
Crowley, is still a stunner. Flawed as it is, I admire it immensely.
Opens on Friday in Manhattan.
Directed by Braden King; written by Mr. King and Dani Valent; director
of photography, Lol Crowley; edited by David Barker, Andrew Hafitz and
Paul Zucker; music by Michael Krassner; production design by Richard
A. Wright; costumes by Amanda Ford; produced by Lars Knudsen and Jay
Van Hoy; released by Strand Releasing. At the IFC Center, 323 Avenue
of the Americas, at Third Street, Greenwich Village. In English and
Armenian, with English subtitles. Running time: 2 hours 6 minutes.
This film is not rated.
WITH: Ben Foster (Will Shepard) and Lubna Azabal (Gadarine Najarian).