heart-shaped hard-drive

Rating: 10/10 (31 December 2013)

We all want to be loved, and love someone, and this is the simple but solid emotional point that Spike Jonze hits at in Her, like a musician playing a high spirited but melancholy song of sweetness and heartache (something the protagonist even requests his iPod to play).
The film takes place in some point in the future - or, since we are never told exactly when, it could just as well be an alternative reality where people just need that one extra step being already hooked up to their devices - and is about a man who writes love letters and cards to others for a living. He's good at it because, well, it comes from inside him. But coming off a divorce that's left him "confused" as he says, an 'O.S.' Operating System, an artificially intelligent super computer that with a few simple questions is meant to be 'made' for that person, it's tempting enough to try. Going into the film, I thought it would be a sort of 'rom-com' only with a Hal 9000 (and can you say 'wackiness ensues' more than that).
It's more complicated by how much Samantha (voiced by Scarlett Johansson, so she sounds like the perfect gal already) is, a side from being a super organizer (she reads and organizes emails and correspondence), an emotional creature. But in a way this dug deeper than something Kubrick just scratched the surface at: if you can really 'be' there for someone, though not in full physical form, what does that do to the real human being on the other end? Joaquin Phoenix, aside from Jonzes delicate and mature screenplay and poetic direction, is the reason to see the picture. He imbues this 'Him' as a kind of sad dope but one that's a genuinely caring and nice fella but not always connected with his own emotions or knowing quite what to say. He is awkward with those glasses and mustache, he plays his oddball video games (an adorable aside in the film, a few times really), but projects a haunted, morose quality without it becoming tired or trite. At the same time he shows the happiness Jonze wants to portray in a relationship, whether it's with his current 'gf'.
Or his once wife (Rooney Mara, and we get to know her so well mostly only through dialogue-less flash backbacks, with some editing input by Steven Soderbergh). He also plays well on some of the moments of comedy that do pop up in the film - it is Jonze, so as it is such a personal film the light and absurd comes in with the gloom - a part of this world But, like us, wondering 'what the hell is this now? Her does science fiction and technological 'if' material so well because of its subtlety. when you watch something like, I don't know, Elysium or even Minority Report, we know it's a future place and the fantasy is big and flashy and sometimes we know we are removed from that experience. Jonze wants this to just be like how it is today, and the sci-to 'catch' is there, for the most part, as a means to explore how we see and feel and experience one another.
I left this film questioning so much how I can approach potentially expanding AI in the future (And now we have systems winning or at least even friggin playing on Jeopardy so it's only a matter of time emotional components are worked out). What does one do with the infinite possibilities with a self aware being. and as in Being John Malkovich, there's always another layer of chaos and wonder that is under the surface waiting to be explored, and in the third act the entire concept of an AI of this magnitude is given a frightening element: being in thousands of places at once but still 'here' at the same time, including love. But it doesn't ever quite 'feel' frightening, and that is a key thing that makes Her special.
Another director might take the narrative into more conventional territory, like if Samantha and her other O.S. beings (which, after a while, they are) took over the world real Skynet style. It's still Tim Twombleys story, his journey into finding some semblance of peace with himself and the world, and if it feels at all like a personal film for Jonze it's because he sticks with that painful, powerful point of it all being about you, your other, and growth (along with the help of pleutonic friend Amy Adams, another fascinating character who we understand almost immediately). Her is must-see stuff, something with pure sentiment (not sentimentality, that edge is so fine to walk on), and an approach visually that also takes this premise and does it seriously, so when a guy is running around and laughing with his little 'pod' of a person, it isn't implausible and a joke, it's simply something 'there' in the world. That's remarkable.