Tom Hanks says there’s a little bit of Forrest Gump and Jenny in ‘Here’ characters

Working with Robert Zemeckis is like a box of chocolates: You never know what you’re going to get.

But one thing remains true for frequent collaborators Tom Hanks and Robin Wright, who first worked with the director on 1994’s Forrest Gump — every film is somehow a continuation of the last. Here, which expands to a wide theatrical release on Nov. 27, is no exception.

Hanks and Wright reunite in another troubled romance, starring as Richard and Margaret, high school sweethearts who end up married and living in Richard’s family home after an accidental pregnancy. While Richard sees the house as a comforting space, Margaret begins to see it as a trap she cannot escape. In a way, the audience is trapped with her: throughout the entire movie, the camera remains in one fixed position as we traverse centuries.

It’s a unique filmmaking twist, but for Hanks, the project is a continuation of the work that’s come before. “Robin’s made four movies with Bob, I’ve made five movies,” he says. “I view them as different moments of the same long conversation.”

“Movies are finite,” he continues. “That’s true. But we brought all the countenance of the first time we worked together into the next time that we worked together. There’s some version of Jenny in the Queen in Beowulf, and there’s some version of Forrest in Chuck on that island all by himself in Castaway. It’s somebody wrestling with the common sense of the moment, even though it can be a surrealistic thing.”

The throughline in Hanks’ work with Zemeckis is about crossing some point of no return — and how that informs the rest of the character’s life. “We get all the way to Here,” Hanks continues. “And [our characters] are kids, and we are going to have a baby. There is no greater divide, I think, in anybody’s life than not being a parent and then being a parent. It is a rubicon that is crossed. In all of these movies, our characters and the theme that you want to examine are about that same kind of rubicon.”

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Another divide between Richard and Margaret is their view of the house where all the action occurs. “It’s the dichotomy of Richard seeing his house as a place of solace and security and Margaret seeing this house as a prison,” he notes. “And yet, they love each other, and they’re together.”

Adds Zemeckis: “Of course, that was powerful because it took place here. And the here part, which has a different meaning to each character, is all part of the fabric.”

According to Hanks, that’s a fabric that he, Zemeckis, and Wright have been stitching for 30-plus years now.