Her

Her is quite simply the best movie I’ve seen all year. That’s the short version of the review. I will now proceed to count the ways I love the movie.

One. Visually stupendous. It is awash in light and a muted but sensuous palette. The beauty is not dramatic, but wistful and ethereal – soft pastels and bright colors, glowing like the magical aftermath of a particularly spectacular sunset. The exterior shots are Los Angeles and a futuristic Shanghai, the interiors are minimalistic and spare. Joaquin Phoenix color blocks his outfits with bright reds and yellows. Its an exquisitely designed film, with attention to every nuance and every aspect of the world the characters live in. Some scenes are particularly vivid – the day at the beach, or the double date and boat ride.

Two. Screenplay. The dialogue is charming and endearing. Spike Jonze captures the essence of real intimacy in a relationship in the conversation between Theodore (Phoenix) and Samantha (Scarlett Johansson as the voice his artificially intelligent computer operating system). The screenplay is also able to develop the characters: Theodore remains in a state of arrested emotional development but is aware that he is finally feeling something “new”, exhilarated because he feared he had already felt everything there was to feel. Samantha, with her sharp intellect fueled by massive computing power, evolves by leaps and bounds. Despite the quietly alarming nature of their relationship, the movie documents just that – a relationship, that evolves as its participants do, discovering life through each other and ultimately coming to terms with who they are.

Three. Joaquin Phoenix. His performance is heartfelt, revelatory in the way he lays his soul bare even while portraying Theodore as ostensibly averse to commitment and restrained in his demonstration of emotion.  His happiness is infectious, his melancholy piercing, his heartbreak wrenching. He is carrying the movie entirely on his shoulders and is single handedly responsible for everything the audience feels.

Four. Scarlett Johansson. Honestly, she has everyone at the first “Hello”. Though never seen on screen, her presence is palpable. Through intonation alone, she is warm, sympathetic, alluring. Whenever asked to describe her, Theodore refers to her excitement for life and Johansson is brilliant at bringing this through. She has a zeal for life and its experiences, and learns quickly. She alternately focuses intensely on Theodore and explores the world, with the ability to carry on thousands of conversations at the same time and read a book of baby names in 2 1/100ths of a second. It would be interesting to see if Scarlett Johansson could pull off the same impact by being physically present in the frames.

Five. The premise. Its simple enough – in a futuristic world, a lonely man falls in love with an artificially intelligent operating system. In another movie, this would have been comedic, full of gags and jokes. Spike Jonze is more tender and gentle with the story. It is after all a version of an extreme long distance relationship, where one never sees the other but yet learns everything about them. And the movie does force you to think about whether it is truly possible, on whether technology will soon make us all into solipsistic zombies, sharing intimacies with our gadgets but ignorant of the outside world. We already talk to our phones, and the promise of wearable, nearly sentient devices is blurring our perception of the real world. But isn’t the intelligence of these devices, after all, artificial? Is it just inspired programming or the next stage in evolution?

This is a movie that makes it impossible to remain unemotional. It is too real to be ignored. We have all felt the incredible loneliness that Theodore feels, and his melancholia in all of life’s daily routines. We’ve all felt the thrill of discovery and a fleeting uneasiness at a technological development that professes to organize our lives and clear the mess that we make of our affairs. And we emote all too sympathetically with Samantha as she grows through learning and feels the pain of distance even in an intimate relationship. We all seek love, but as we all learn, the truest romances are short-lived and always imperfect.

My Rating: 5/5