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Seattle Weekly (Washington)
June 20, 2012 Wednesday
Here: Ben Foster in an Armenian Romance
by Karina Longworth
Will (Ben Foster)-a lone-wolf American cartographer on contract to
collect data on the ground to match to satellite maps in Armenia's
rural, disputed Eastern territory-is bailed out of a
lost-in-translation situation by beautiful, feisty,
Armenian-born/Paris-schooled photographer Gadarine (Lubna Azabal).
Soon the attractive pair hits the road, both armed with tools-her
camera, his satellite-enabled measurement whatsits-to map the land
according to their respective instincts. At more than two hours,
Braden King's languid, vignette-driven road movie moves slowly and
deliberately-all the better to invoke the disorientation of characters
who are venturing off the grid both geographically and emotionally,
their perspectives skewed by booze and new lust.
The drama is occasionally interrupted by saturated montages, set to
narration that aims to poetically evoke the film's key themes-namely,
the blinkered romance of travel, the impulse to capture the ineffable
in tangible forms, the conflict between "ground truth" and authentic
experience. The dreamy, feverish beauty of these sequences just barely
balances the pretension of the exposition. The film falters the
further it drifts from that overheated, slightly delusional mood; the
more precisely it's scripted, the less it feels true. (In a
relationship-spat scene, the lovers basically shout "We're from
different worlds!" at each other.) But the actors have incredible
physical chemistry, and Here can be captivating when King sticks to
exploring the conquering instinct-over land, in love-by setting their
budding relationship against the unknowable landscape and allowing the
imagery to speak for itself.
June 20, 2012 Wednesday
Here: Ben Foster in an Armenian Romance
by Karina Longworth
Will (Ben Foster)-a lone-wolf American cartographer on contract to
collect data on the ground to match to satellite maps in Armenia's
rural, disputed Eastern territory-is bailed out of a
lost-in-translation situation by beautiful, feisty,
Armenian-born/Paris-schooled photographer Gadarine (Lubna Azabal).
Soon the attractive pair hits the road, both armed with tools-her
camera, his satellite-enabled measurement whatsits-to map the land
according to their respective instincts. At more than two hours,
Braden King's languid, vignette-driven road movie moves slowly and
deliberately-all the better to invoke the disorientation of characters
who are venturing off the grid both geographically and emotionally,
their perspectives skewed by booze and new lust.
The drama is occasionally interrupted by saturated montages, set to
narration that aims to poetically evoke the film's key themes-namely,
the blinkered romance of travel, the impulse to capture the ineffable
in tangible forms, the conflict between "ground truth" and authentic
experience. The dreamy, feverish beauty of these sequences just barely
balances the pretension of the exposition. The film falters the
further it drifts from that overheated, slightly delusional mood; the
more precisely it's scripted, the less it feels true. (In a
relationship-spat scene, the lovers basically shout "We're from
different worlds!" at each other.) But the actors have incredible
physical chemistry, and Here can be captivating when King sticks to
exploring the conquering instinct-over land, in love-by setting their
budding relationship against the unknowable landscape and allowing the
imagery to speak for itself.