Her (15.)
Directed by Spike Jonze.
Starring Joaquin Phoenix, Scarlett Johansson, Amy Adams, Chris Pratt, Rooney Mara and Portia Doubleday. 126 mins
Her is like a Microsoft ad that has achieved independent consciousness and is trying to grasp the wider significance of its existence. It has the same light bright naturalistic tones, the boundless sense of hope, but coupled with a curiosity and wonder at what this all might mean. In some ways it’s every bit as facile as those admen fantasies but it is imbued with a questing, open spirit. And it is full of love and wonder.
Spike Jonze’s second film in over a decade sees him working for the first time with an original script he wrote himself. It is the story of Theodore Twomby (Phoenix) who works at BeautifulHandwrittenLetters.com crafting personalised messages. After the breakup of his previous relationship he buys an Artificially Intelligent Operating System, called Samantha (Johansson), to organise his online affairs and finds himself falling in love with it.
Her is really unclassifiable. There are funny satirical moments, slightly disturbing bits but mostly it is gentle and loving. The characters are all new age babies, burbling about their feeling yet rather than inspiring contempt and cynicism, the film is beautifully engaging. It like being inside a send up of self-help attitudes, looking out and not seeing the obvious satire. The effect is totally disarming.
It is set one tiny little step into the future, in an L.A. that is the flipside of the one in Blade Runner, an L.A. that has co-opted the best bits of Shanghai and all the other far eastern metropolises that have supplanted Tokyo as our dream of the future. These futuristic cities exude a simpleminded optimism and faith in progress that is infectious.
(Jonze’s ex-wife Sofia Coppola once made a film in Tokyo which is often perceived to include a dig at him. Her is in many ways his variation on Lost in Translation but entirely without bitterness.)
The main performances are superb. In The Master, Phoenix launched himself into the Day Lewis stratosphere and he is just as good here, though in a different direction. That was all externalised volatility – he didn’t seem to be capable of having a thought or feeling without expressing it. Here he is placid and reasoned, yet just as unique and mesmerising. Johansson’s whole role is that of a disembodied voice and disembodied really becomes her: freed of the constraints of stardom she is just pure talent. Her and Phoenix are an inspired pairing.
Directed by Spike Jonze.
Starring Joaquin Phoenix, Scarlett Johansson, Amy Adams, Chris Pratt, Rooney Mara and Portia Doubleday. 126 mins
Her is like a Microsoft ad that has achieved independent consciousness and is trying to grasp the wider significance of its existence. It has the same light bright naturalistic tones, the boundless sense of hope, but coupled with a curiosity and wonder at what this all might mean. In some ways it’s every bit as facile as those admen fantasies but it is imbued with a questing, open spirit. And it is full of love and wonder.
Spike Jonze’s second film in over a decade sees him working for the first time with an original script he wrote himself. It is the story of Theodore Twomby (Phoenix) who works at BeautifulHandwrittenLetters.com crafting personalised messages. After the breakup of his previous relationship he buys an Artificially Intelligent Operating System, called Samantha (Johansson), to organise his online affairs and finds himself falling in love with it.
Her is really unclassifiable. There are funny satirical moments, slightly disturbing bits but mostly it is gentle and loving. The characters are all new age babies, burbling about their feeling yet rather than inspiring contempt and cynicism, the film is beautifully engaging. It like being inside a send up of self-help attitudes, looking out and not seeing the obvious satire. The effect is totally disarming.
It is set one tiny little step into the future, in an L.A. that is the flipside of the one in Blade Runner, an L.A. that has co-opted the best bits of Shanghai and all the other far eastern metropolises that have supplanted Tokyo as our dream of the future. These futuristic cities exude a simpleminded optimism and faith in progress that is infectious.
(Jonze’s ex-wife Sofia Coppola once made a film in Tokyo which is often perceived to include a dig at him. Her is in many ways his variation on Lost in Translation but entirely without bitterness.)
The main performances are superb. In The Master, Phoenix launched himself into the Day Lewis stratosphere and he is just as good here, though in a different direction. That was all externalised volatility – he didn’t seem to be capable of having a thought or feeling without expressing it. Here he is placid and reasoned, yet just as unique and mesmerising. Johansson’s whole role is that of a disembodied voice and disembodied really becomes her: freed of the constraints of stardom she is just pure talent. Her and Phoenix are an inspired pairing.
