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The film gets one thing absolutely right: Robert Allen Zimmerman from Duluth Minnesota is truly an unknown, having systematically crafted his persona as unknowable. Also, he is one of the most important songwriters of all time.

Did his heart honestly and humbly lead him to Woody Guthrie's hospital bed, and to the attention and recognition of Pete Seeger and of already famous and important Joan Baez, or did he attach himself to them in order to craftily start at the top, "bursting on the scene already a legend"? Maybe both?

In the film, if you blink, you'll miss the unexplored depth and nature of the relationship between Joan Baez and Bob Dylan. "The unwashed phenomenon, The original vagabond, he strayed into her arms; And there he stayed, Temporarily lost at sea, The Madonna was his for free, Yes, the girl on the half-shell, Could keep him unharmed". Where is all this in the film in all its centrally important nature and depth?

Also glossed over, blink and miss the point, the relationship with "Sylvie Russo" (Elle Fanning) in the movie, standing-in for Dylan's real-life muse and lover Suze Rotolo.

He starts revering Woody, Pete and folk music, and he ends his life-overture, 1961-1965 by completely and irreverently betraying and discarding Pete Seeger and the Newport Folk Festival. Was that Dylan evolving into what he became to our greater culture, or was it a user who had no further use for those who gave him his ascent?

And Chalamet? Did he craft a labor of love, or did he find a subject that would make for a profitable film? Or, both? Unknown.

I started by crying incessantly for the first 10-or-so minutes of the film -even though Pete Seeger, in real life, was not there when Dylan first visited Woody Guthrie, and Woody, in real life, never gave Bob his harmonica. By the end of it, the film felt to me like it is really not at all a film about Bob Dylan but, in fact, about Pete Seeger. Who knew... In my opinion, Edward Norton more than deserves the Oscar for inhabiting Pete Seeger.

It was Pete who discovered and was then betrayed by someone who was in fact on his own, with no direction home, A complete unknown, like a rolling stone... How does it feel, how does it feel?

Who would have Bob Dylan been had he not written Blowing in The Wind, The Times They Are A-Changin', or Mr. Tambourine Man? Or Highway 61 Revisited?

Last thing before the end credits we are told that Bob Dylan is the only songwriter to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, but he did not attend the ceremony. Why? Out of humility? Maybe because he did not recognize it or care for it? Or to make a point in arrogance and superiority? Perhaps all of the above?

I'm thinking that the criteria of evaluating any work must be relevant to the context of the work. When I learned that Here is a 1-hour 40-minutes film shot from one static angle and one static lens, my first thought was "Theater", with the audience stuck in the auditorium in front of the stage. So, my first question was "why?" Obviously, it would be pointless for the Cinema to emulate the Theater, technically, so it must be something else. Not the "Theater" as in "such stuff as dreams are made of", but the "Stage" as in "the world is a stage".

Watching Here from that angle of context I was not expecting literature in the dialog. I was expecting the real world, flaws an'all kinds of imperfections, the real world, to be set right there in front of me, for me to observe. In that respect, Here delivered and then some.

The gang was all there: Zemeckis, Wright, Hanks and Silvestri, flanked by Bettany and Reilly. The CGI ageing and de-ageing of the actors was incredible and the music beautiful. If there was a message it was no more, or less than that our little life is rounded with a sleep while we, as actors, revel like spirits preparing to melt into thin air.

Both my wife and I loved this movie; we thought it was incredible. We must apologize for our impudence to all the wise folk who are trashing it. What do we know... Still, if one were to set one's compass to appropriate expectations in the context of this brilliant idea Zemeckis had, I don't see how Here can fail to please. It was real people, on that stage. Just like us.

A song comes to mind from the seventies with a chorus that would be good advice to the script writers of The Return: it goes like this: You don't tug on Superman's cape, You don't spit into the wind, You don't pull the mask off that old lone ranger, And you don't mess around with Homer's verse.

(OK, the ending of the last line was mine, not in the original song)

There are three stars that hold this movie together: The incomparable Juliette Binoche. The unparalleled Ralph Fiennes. And Homer's immortal story even if we only get to watch the end of that story, at the end of Odysseas' ten-year Odyssey.

Uberto Pasolini, Luchino Visconti's nephew, wrote the screenplay and directed. In messing with the script, he proved unworthy of running into a bottega to buy Homer a pack of Italian cigarettes. He missed the entire point of the Odyssey, the conclusion of which he committed to film. The point of the real Epic Poem is that Ithaca is not the homecoming; Ithaca is the journey. It is what the traveler has collected along the way, the wisdom, the knowledge, the experience of life that make him worthy of returning, of finally arriving at Ithaca. Of going home. According to signor Pasolini, the Odysseas in his film is ridden with guilt, insecurity and sadness. And young Telemachus' relationship with his mom, Penelope, and his dad, Odysseas in this telling, belongs on a Brooklyn analyst's couch.

But the performances by Binoche and Fiennes are amazing. Mesmerizing. They save the day, the journey and the movie. When you have these two to tell a story, you don't need editing shots together to tell the story; you just point a standard lens to either actor's face and roll the film (or digital, whatever). Their facial muscles and their eyes tell the story in all its depth. Pasolini's direction must be given some credit for the performances, salvaging him from the Hades his screenplay condemns him to.

It was shot on location on the Greek island of Corfu and the Peloponnese, also some locations in Italy. The real Ithaca is a small island next to and east of the island of Cephalonia right between Corfu and the Peloponnese, so why not shoot "Ithaca", well... in Ithaca? They were right there. Almost. So close.

The cinematography is great, if only too wintery and gloomy to convey Greece, and its spirit, ancient or modern. Thankfully, at least there were olive trees. And I very much doubt that ancient Greeks lived in black Bedouin tents. Odysseas palace in the movie is reminiscent of a medieval fortress. Any set designer worth one's ambition in construction costs would know that the Trojan War took place probably in the 13th century BCE, the end of the Minoan period, so Odysseas' palace should look more like Knossos Palace and less like the prison of Edmond Dantes.

Yes, I know, it's an adaptation. OK, I'll chill. I'll just take away the rare performances that make the two protagonists look and feel like you are watching Penelope and Odysseas rather than Juliette Binoche and Ralph Fiennes.