Spike Jonze, 2013
editors: Eric Zumbrunnen, Jeff Buchanan
cinematography: Hoyte van Hoytema
Like a lot of great science fiction, Spike Jonze’s
Her uses
the future to articulate the present more profoundly than wholly
contemporary films could. No film of the last five years has better
defined the relationship people have with technology and each other, and
few have been as insightful about the mysteries of the heart, and how
lovers connect and drift apart. In
Her, the affair happens
between Theodore Twombly (Joaquin Phoenix), a high-waisted writer still
reeling from a divorce, and a computer operating system named Samantha
(Scarlett Johansson). That relationship gives
Her a novel
gimmick that Jonze makes utterly plausible. He’s aware that it’s a leap
for audiences to buy into an affair between a man and an OS, and he
finds small ways to make it easier, from Theodore’s funny, embarrassed
self-awareness to Johansson’s voice, which has its own vivid
associations. There’s a flirty intimacy to their conversations that
reflects the bonds people can make over IM or email exchanges.
It
would be enough for Jonze to show the modern appeals of a virtual
relationship, of being able to love a compliant, responsive, fully
customizable mate instead of a thornier, non-virtual one. But
Her
doesn’t stop there. The phenomenon it ultimately expresses, with
heartbreaking insight, is the trajectory of a doomed relationship—how
people (and the Operating Systems that represent them) are constantly
changing, and sometimes evolve past each other. Jonze has made a
break-up film that doubles as a capsule-worthy snapshot of how we live
today, when technology has torn down some barriers and erected others
that are difficult to scale. The quest for a real, human moment is
movie-long, but
Her doesn’t lack warmth or feeling. It simply finds it, like Theodore, in surprising, unconventional places. —
Scott Tobias
