Review: her/ Night Film Reviews www.nightfilmreviews.com

Rating: 10/10 (2 January 2014)

From the moment the screen fills with light, and we come face-to-face with Theodore Twombly (Joaquin Phoenix), his eyes are desolate while his voice is filled with love as he recites the poetically romantic words of Loretta's letter to her husband of fifty years, Chris. Theodore works for BeautifullyHandwrittenLetters.com, a company established sometime in the near future where people are either too lazy or just mentally incapable of writing their own letters to their loved ones. The irony of her begins (as do so many other films) with someone else's love story. The trials and tribulations of Theodore's love story not only mirrors the love we share with others but also portrays our uncontrollable and inexplicable dependence or 'love' for technology. In that sense, her becomes part science fiction love story/part docudrama, with a message that is both a parable of the direction human behaviour is headed and a misunderstood, timeless love story for the ages. Either way, her is the most captivating and responsive film of the year, demanding attention with a grueling look at our ability to love and be loved.
her is a cinematic masterpiece for a new generation of technologically burdened individuals. From the moment our two-star crossed lovers meet, we are transfixed, as they are. From the moment I laid eyes on it, I had fallen in love. Being a believer of love at first sight, or in this instance, love at first sound, her has been a film that has left quite an impression on me and has given me so much to think and talk about.
This is a peculiarly self-conscious film with themes that are both fantastically impossible yet completely plausible. Essentially, Theo falls in love with the new operating system that is found on his mobile device. The operating system, created by a company called Element Software (substituting for Apple), have crafted the first ever artificially intelligent operating system. Unfortunately for Theo, once he hears the voice of his new OS (operating system), the chump never stood a chance. As the spirals swirl on his computer screen and his personalized operating system is initialized, a voice begins, "Hello I'm here" and from that moment on, we empathize with Theodore and his ability to fall in love with a voice that is full bodied, raspy and alluring, yet empty; in the same way technology has the ability to be both fascinating and enthralling, yet unfulfilling. The Siri-like persona is voiced by Scarlett Johansson. Originally, the voice of Samantha in Spike Jonze's film was going to be voiced by Samantha Morton (hence why the name Samantha stuck and served as a tribute to the original talented actress), but Jonze opted for a more recognizable voice whose image off-screen is as seductive as when she is on screen. Johansson nails every subtle nuance in her voice-work and offers a career best performance as Samantha. Her ability to express not only the deep desire she has for a physical form but also her unexplainable love for life, learning, and Theodore, will hopefully land Johansson a spot in the history books as the first ever nominee in the Supporting Actress category without ever actually appearing on-screen. Let's just hope the Academy recognizes this high-point in the medium as well.
The world according to Jonze looks to be one filled with humanized androids, a world where people endlessly look down at their smartphones,and are never more than an arms reach from any of their devices, and his vision very much resembles the world we live in today. The people in his world are easy to relate to especially with the very possible realization that that is what our growing technological wonderland may actually look like in the not-so-distant future. Jonze takes a very literal interpretation of 'falling in love with your smartphone' as portrayed in his very heavy-handed love story. Contrary to skeptics, Jonze triumphs in his ability to script a world where anything is possible. Jonze's tale of people falling in love with technology is not actually a far stretch from our current Westernized mentality, where people are literally attached and completely dependent on the little devices that organize our lives, our schedules, our thoughts and evades all new and old experiences.
One of the most notable and obvious aspects of the world Jonze crafts is how easily everyone is able to be connected, yet how alone and how the character of isolation plays on the interactions between people and their relationships with one another. Ironically enough, her succeeds in all its glory when it magnifies the reclusiveness in which many of the people in the film seem to share. Lacking any real human interactions and genuine human emotions, the film highlights the awkwardness between Theo and many of the people around him; most notably in scenes involving a blind date with quite a gorgeous woman (Olivia Wilde), as well as a very hysterical chat room scene. Theo is constantly longing affection and companionship following his grueling divorce, and it is in the scenes where he voices this longing and his attraction to Samantha that his love and passion is thoroughly and visually understood.
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