Her

Rating: 10/10 (26 December 2016)

Our world today is filled with many nice conveniences thanks to the rapidly advancing rate of technology, yet this reliance on technology can cause us to feel distant and disconnected. No film embodies this more than "Her", Spike Jonze's quasi-futuristic love story in which Theodore, a lonely and recently divorced man, begins to fall in love with Samantha, an Artificial Intelligence.
While the premise may sound like it would be executed with a comedic or satirical tone, Spike Jonze wrote and directed this with a realistic and serious tone. Instead of mocking Theodore, the film empathizes with him, and does so surprisingly effectively. The film centers around Joaquin Phoenix and Scarlett Johansson (even though it's just her voice) and they both needed to be pretty much perfect in order for the film to actually be involving and interesting, and somehow they pull it off. Theodore's job is essentially writing deeply personal greeting cards between people, and this job itself says a lot about Theodore. He is thoughtful and emotional, yet he's disconnected from those around him, which is also shown through the cinematography. The environment surrounding him is often out of focus, even in the opening shot. As he walks through the streets, he is depicted as very small and at the bottom of the frame. It is ultimately this feeling of disconnect from other people that leads him to get an AI, ad it's ultimately what leads him to start a romantic relationship with her. The romantic relationship between this man and his AI could've easily come off as unintentionally funny and awkward, but the romance develops believably and understandably from the perspective of both Theodore and Samantha. The cinematography also shows the connection between both characters. In many of the scenes in which Theodore is with Samantha, the camera closes in on him, almost as if the fact that he is alone in the room is disappearing, and he feels as if he is really with Samantha.
In one scene, Samantha hires a "sex surrogate" to aid her relationship with Theodore, despite Theodore's feelings against it. This "sex surrogate" is essentially a person who acts as a physical representation of an AI in order for them to have sex (she isn't a prostitute, just someone very passionate about helping their relationship). In this scene, Theodore essentially goes full circle. One of the main reasons he started this relationship was because he couldn't handle the difficulties of a human relationship, and now that Samantha is being physically represented as a human, he is beginning to realize how far she actually is from being human, and now he feels as if the relationship he has with her isn't a real relationship, and he feels guilty for not being able to handle a human relationship, so he ends up distancing himself from Samantha as well.
Who he eventually goes to is Amy, his long time friend who was recently divorced to her husband, and who also has a friendship with an AI. The advice she essentially gives him is that he has to allow himself to be happy. He shouldn't overthink and worry about everything, because that would just ruin it. This doesn't just apply to maintaining his relationship with her, but ending it. When Theodore comes to the sad realization that Samantha is outgrowing him, just as his former wife did, instead of wallowing in his loneliness, and essentially distancing himself from others, he decides he must accept it and move on. And just as he does with Samantha, Theodore says goodbye to his ex-wife in the form of a letter. And finally, when he has said goodbye to them, he comes right to Amy, once again allowing himself to be happy.
This may be a story with a strong feeling of loneliness, yet even in the opening shot, the film shows that we all share this feeling. Although the background in the first shot is at first out of focus and Theodore seems to be alone, the camera pulls back revealing all of the other people with the same job as Theodore, and that everyone around him is just like him. Similarly, when Samantha sends a compilation of Theodore's best letters to the head of a publishing company, the man who receives it connects deeply with these personal writings. Even though our experiences are uniquely personal, what Theodore doesn't realize is that they are also universal.
The sci-fi elements of the film are handled extremely well. No one ever explains what anything does or what anything is in this film, yet it is easy to tell visually what everything is. This is a very realistic vision of the future, while most are very exaggerated in some way (even the great ones). New video games, new fashion style, new smartphones (which are now pretty much just an ear piece that you speak to), everything is simply shown yet it is easily understood what all of these are and how they have evolved from how they are now. Simply put, this film respects the intelligence of the audience. Also, rarely has a movie's soundtrack so perfectly fit the tone of the film and the tone of each individual scene that each song is used in.
The film is an original love story that makes it easy to connect to it's characters, yet it is also thematically deep, and it creates one of the most unique and realistic visions of the future that I have ever seen. I pretty much love everything about this movie.