Love as a one-sided fantasy and two-sided tragedy...

Rating: 9/10 (15 March 2017)

"Being John Malkovich" and "Adaptation.".explored the human gift for transcendence, whether by taking distance from reality in order to explore your deeper needs, or being alienated by the power of imagination, in other words: they dealt with fantasy.
Those were movies directed by Spike Jonze but all the credit went to Charlie Kaufman, a real revelation on the field of creative storytelling. Kaufman would finally win an Oscar with "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind", another masterpiece that explores the limitations of fantasy when confronted to reality. And while watching "Her", I couldn't stop thinking of Kaufman, there is no doubt he influenced Jonze, but this is a Jonze's movie, written and directed by.
In "Her", he explores romance and love in the realm of modernity and technological advances, through a unique and believable relationship between a lonely man named Theodore and Samantha, an OS with the voice of Scarlett Johansen. The OS is the name of a program that creates a virtual conscience responsive to any possible needs. The film is set in a futuristic world where voices replaced the fingers, you can listen to your mails, delete or answer them, you can select music just by using your voice. The OS can do that but it can be more, it can even be things it doesn't know yet, and one thing it is for sure, is one of the greatest MacGuffin of recent cinema's history.
And the film doesn't try to over-exploit the Sci-fi format, it deals with the romances and uses the OS in order to comment on our very visions of love in our technological age. And on that level, I've never felt as deeply connected to a character than I was with Theodore. His experience and relationship with women and Samantha in particular spoke very deeply in my heart. Joaquin Phoenix could have played it like an awkward Woody Allen figure, full of crazy mimics or mannerisms but he's a nice, ordinary guy who's just went through a very close relationship with Catherine (Rooney Mara) and had to break up, because he couldn't handle the changes and the subsequent fears.
Theodore embodies the notion of love as either an evolving process or one that has to cope with the evolution of the persons, but what if their evolution don't converge, or is it even possible to engage in a commune evolution without sacrificing one part of yourself. When does your standpoint start to matter? And what if one of the two parties is domineering? That's precisely the case of Amy, Theodore's neighbor, played by Amy Adams, who couldn't stand anymore her control-freak husband. And her situation indirectly points out the edge of Theodore, who lives a break-up proof relationship with Samantha for a simple reason: it's a one-sided love, you don't have to make concessions.
There's one painful scene where a date goes too perfect to be true between Theodore and Olivia Wilde and it goes all wrong when she asks him if he wants to be serious. How many dates did I want to seize the perfection of the moment without longing for another encounter? Sometimes, you embrace the delight of the moment without wishing for a repetition. That's the limit of our virtual vision of love, even with a real person, you'd rather have the temporary illusion of perfection than its fading effect over the passing of years.
"Her" is so spot-on many times that it's almost painful to watch, this is a film made by someone who know how relationships start and how they end. That Amy's separation is due to pointless arguments speak thousand words, how many roads to divorce were paved by pointless arguments, rather than existential blocks? And today, more than any other time, love is weakened by the availability of options. If we break something, we fix it, but when a heart is broken, you believe it will be naturally fixed through another relationship.
It is not cynical, that's the way it is. And its portrayal of a futuristic world where everything can be easily be done with a combination of complex processes works on a prophetic level because you can see this is not so distant from our reality. Speaking for myself, I remember a time where chatting with someone was the most exhilarating sensation ever, we didn't even need to meet, then after AOL, MSN came, and it allowed many people who were too shy for girls to make up for the lost time. But I was married before Tinder application was made and I can't imagine how now it became easy to have sex.
This is not even explored in "Her", because love, rather than sex, is the focal point and Theodore isn't concerned by physical contact (otherwise, Samantha would've been useless). "Her" explores how far you can get with the technological evolution when it comes to fulfill your need for love, what is the catch? Maybe, when things get too easy, they get easily out of control, if a program is sophisticated enough to have one soul-mate, it can have 2, 3, as many as it can get, where's the power of love? Same goes with Tinder, if you can have one partner, why not, two? Why even marrying? Isn't monogamy out-dated anyway?
The merit of Jonze's script, one that had swept all the screenplay awards, is to use a very specific set-up to create situations we can relate to. This is powerful film-making, served by a fantastic performance by Joaquin Phoenix as a real sponge for emotions. In the end, "Her" doesn't say exactly if we can still love today, but that love is such a fundamental part of living, no human should be excluded from that journey.
No matter the way you choose to love or be loved, you must experience love, the real way, the hard way.