What does the Hummingbird Mean in Here?

Robert Zemeckis’ ‘Here’ follows the story of one place that witnesses the stories of several people who pass through it. The film, unique in its approach to storytelling, aims to dig for a deeper truth as centuries and millennia pass by in the front of a single frame. People move in and out of the place, starting from the dinosaurs and the Ice Age to the couples who inhabit the place in the current timeline. One of the recurring things in the film is a hummingbird that appears at some crucial moments of the story, including the beginning and the end, suggesting a greater meaning behind its presence. SPOILERS AHEAD.

The Hummingbird Brings the Story Full Circle in Here

The timelines in ‘Here’ vary across a wide range, amidst all of which a couple of things remain the same. Due to the choice of the camera, the location is constant for almost the entirety of the film. The other thing that appears time and again is the hummingbird. It first appears in the time after the Ice Age when the greenery has reclaimed the Earth, and different lifeforms have claimed it. The bird continues to appear throughout the rest of the film in different time eras until the house is fully built and the view of the place is restricted to the living room of the house. We eventually see the bird again at the end of the film when the camera finally moves and gives us an aerial view of the house and the neighborhood it is in from the top of the colonial house that has been in the background for more than half of the film.

The presence of the bird at the end echoes its arrival in the beginning, and in both cases, it denotes the continuation of the circle of life. As one story ends, another begins, and thus, the world keeps going forward. Throughout the film, we see different stories play out, and each brings its fair share of grief and loss. While there is happiness as families celebrate each other and their love, there are also endings where they bid each other goodbye. In all of this, the fact remains that one story has to end for another to begin. The tragedies that make one person leave the house open the way for someone else to find happiness in the place by setting down their roots and making their own memories there.

The hummingbird also underlines the presence and absence of nature in the story. In parts of the film, before the house is built, it appears more frequently due to the abundance of nature in a place with fewer people. But once the foundation of the house is laid and the story takes a completely different turn, the location is closed off for the bird. When it eventually reappears, it is technically not the end of the story, as we know that Richard’s house will be sold and will be occupied by another family that will live there for a few years before they, too, eventually move out, opening the house for someone else to inhabit and call their own.

The bird’s appearance is connected to Margaret, who now has dementia and is inching closer to death each day. Interestingly, it mirrors the death scene of the Indigenous woman from another time era, which is also where the bird shows up. In this context, one might consider it a harbinger of grief, but instead, it represents the enduring nature of love that continues to appear in different forms over the course of time. It must be noted that Margaret is not sad but happy to have her memories of the house and her daughter back. With all this in mind, we can say that the bird acts like a thread, keeping them together with a singular theme that gives more meaning to the overall story.

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