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Tom Hanks in "Finch": Half of the family is flesh and blood, the other half of metal
Photo: Karen Kuehn / Apple TV +
Tom Hanks doing violence to someone in a film is rare. In the end-of-time drama »Finch«, which takes place after a global catastrophe, he robs one of his companions of the eyesight: he unscrews a camera lens from a robot he built himself in order to use it on a new model. Hanks plays this with so much gentle empathy for the tin box that you as a viewer can hardly help but be touched. And you are right in the middle of a film that explores the boundary between man and machine.
The engineer Finch survived a disaster that devastated large parts of the world in a bunker. Now and then he dares to go up into the glaring daylight. It is so intense that without a protective suit it would burn your skin in a short time. He roams the area with a robot in search of something useful, especially food for his dog. More and more often, Finch has blood running out of his nose or mouth, he knows that he doesn't have much longer to live. So he builds a second, more sophisticated robot that will take care of the dog after his death.
Films about (mostly male) heroes in post-apocalyptic worlds form a genre of their own. The main characters wander through deserts as in "Mad Max", sail across the sea as in "Waterworld" or trudge through landscapes of ruins as in "I Am Legend". They are lonely fighters, whose belief in the good in people has been shaken, and at the same time warriors in the struggle for survival. So you could say that Hanks is not exactly an obvious line-up for a film in this genre. On the other hand, he has played a character like Finch before: in the Robinson Crusoe variation "Cast Away - Verschollen", as the parcel delivery man Chuck who ends up on a remote island after a plane crash.
Finch builds his robots from the same impulse that Chuck uses to call a beached volleyball "Wilson" and makes him his companion.
He prefers to avoid the few people who are still alive because he has experienced bad things with them.
But he longs for someone to talk to.
So »Finch« becomes a family film in which one half of the clan is made of flesh and blood and the other half of metal.
At first, the robot Jeff looks at his hands in amazement like a small child, fascinated by what he can do with them.
Finch later teaches him how to take one step in front of the other without falling, or how to drive a car.
Jeff becomes a surrogate son for him, who learns very quickly and grows up in no time.
Clarified melancholy
This film could easily drift into kitsch. But he is permeated by a deep, serene melancholy and at the same time carried by hope: One hero dies, but the other comes into life. British director Miguel Sapochnik, who staged several episodes of "Game of Thrones" among other things, turns Jeff into a lovable protagonist without belittling him too much. Jeff is an artificial intelligence that approaches human existence and often goes wrong in the process - to Finch's chagrin. Sapochnik and Hanks skilfully counteract the threat of sentimentality with wit and laconism.
»Finch« was shot in spring 2019 - originally for the screen. When the cinemas had to close during the pandemic, the start date was postponed and the film was then sold to the Apple TV + streaming service, which is now showing it. The war spectacle "Greyhound", in which Hanks plays the captain of a destroyer, has already suffered the same fate, the actor is one of the Hollywood stars particularly damaged by corona. But while "Greyhound" was perhaps better off on the screen than on the screen, this is different with "Finch".
When the title character sets off with his surrogate family to find something better for them than death, he traverses some of the greatest landscapes in the United States.
One sequence takes place in front of Shiprock, a rock formation rising steeply out of the desert and holy place of the indigenous people in northwest New Mexico.
In front of this majestic backdrop, the film comes to rest and lingers there for a long time to reflect on life and death and what remains of a person.
One of the saddest, most beautiful, most moving sequences that was last seen in a film.
