Starring: Joaquin Phoenix, Scarlett Johansson, Amy Adams, Rooney Mara, Chris Pratt
Distributor: Sony Pictures
Runtime: 126 mins. Reviewed in Jan 2014
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It was not a surprise when Spike Jonze’s film won the Golden Globe for Best Screenplay. Jonze made an impression some years ago with his films about identity, Being John Malkovich and Adaptation.
This time he goes into the not-too-distant future. It looks very much like our own time – and especially with people, so many people, walking the streets and talking into some kind of communications implements. To capture this atmosphere, the exteriors of the future city are those of Shanghai in the present, with some locations in Los Angeles.
And why the title, Her?
It is best to first consider the hero of the film, Theodore Twombley, Teddy/Ted to those close to him. The trouble is that there are not too many people close to him. At the opening of the film, we see him telling a story into a computer, a sad letter which we find he is composing for a client, working at the company bestletters.com. He has some contacts which with his fellow workers, especially Paul who always praises him and his work. But, as he goes home, we realise he is in the middle of a divorce, his wife wanting him to sign the papers. He has a son whom he loves. And that is about all.
Teddy sees a huge billboard advertising a computerised Operating Service, providing a voice and intelligence as some kind of assistant or companion. Teddy signs up and is given Samantha, Sam, who proves herself not only a companion, an intelligent friend, but someone who is exploring her own identity even though she is an artificial intelligence. Teddy begins to rely on her more and more, talking with her, listening to her, sharing her personality and vitality, and falling in love with her.
Most of the film is taken up with this growing friendship and love, a growing intimacy, sexual awareness. The film is unpredictable, the audience not sure where it might be going in terms of Teddy and his identity, his humanity, his love. And the audience is not sure how Sam will develop and how human she could become.
We are very conscious now of how people rely on mobile phones, texting, continually communicating with people who are not physically present and how that has repercussions on what they are actually doing, saying, sharing with the people who are with them. Her takes for granted this kind of communication (most people in the film, in the streets, in buildings, are busy talking but not to anybody physically with them). What will it be like in the future with the developments in technology and the developments in robotics as well as artificial intelligence? Will humans be the better for all of this? More human? Better communicators?
While these issues are being explored and the audience thinking about them, the film invites us to share Teddy’s life and experience, his ordinariness, his sense of failure, the support that Sam gives him and the power of her transforming him. And questions are raised about the personalities of the artificial creations, with all the semblance is of humanity and intelligence.
Joaquin Phoenix gives one of his best performances, being on screen for all the scenes, communicating by his body language, his silences, the intensity of his inner feelings, who Teddy is and what he is longing for. For most of the film, Phoenix is interacting with an off-screen voice. Scarlett Johansson provides the voice of Sam, and is compelling. Amy Adams plays a close friend, a sympathetic sounding board for Teddy.
Once more, Spike Jonze contributes an interesting and tantalising exploration of contemporary men and women, the technologies of the 21st century and the challenges, creative and potentially destructive, of how human beings can be.
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