Sadness Is Good If Done Well, and This Is

Rating: 7/10 (19 February 2014)

Spike Jonze's Her follows a lonely writer who gradually falls in love with his computer's sentient operating system (OS 1). Poor Theodore Twombley is sensitive and empathetic but just can't quite figure out how to get that across to the women in his life until he meets the one gal who's specifically designed to be exactly right for him.
The irony is that Theodore works for a fictional web company (sometime in the near future) called Beautiful Handwritten Letters (dot-com), where we see the letters being "handwritten" on a computer screen using voice-activated script fonts. But, despite the artifice and deceptive business practice, there's real human intelligence and caring behind the text of the letters. Theodore's really good at imagining himself in the position of the people who've asked him to pour out "their" hearts in the letters he's composing on their behalf — in some cases for repeat clients who've been coming to him for 8 years.
Not at all techy (not even an admonition to back up your hard drive, with accompanying cautionary tale), it's a really low-key film about the quest for human connection. It's not talky, either, but the limited dialog (by Jonze) is well crafted, realistic, and involving.
The most unbelievable part is that our boy lives 2 floors up from Amy Adams, who's a good friend of his, and he hasn't crawled across crushed glass to try to win her affections. The least unbelievable part is that he attains an intellectual and emotional resonance with the warm, cheerful voice of Samantha (voiced by Scarlett Johanssen, never seen), who's always there for him, constantly evolves to adapt to his personality, and is exquisitely sensitive to his moods.
It's a really sad movie with flits and blips of light-heartedness and happiness. Much of it is just Joaquin Phoenix's sorrowful face filling the screen in silence. This is about as far from Transformers and Pacific Rim as imaginable, which is all to the good IMHO. There is zero action, indeed, hardly any rapid movement of any kind. It's quiet and contemplative, giving the audience a chance to reflect on what we really seek out of a relationship and discover that the physical connection is only part of it, and probably a dispensable part at that.
It's from Annapurna Productions, the independent studio founded by Megan Ellison (dottor of úber-billionaire Oracle founder Larry Ellison), and that is turning out to be quite the mark of quality. It didn't go into wide release until last month, but they snuck in a limited release in December to qualify for the 2013 Oscars, and, sure enuf, it's a Best Picture nominee.