Her

I’m not really sure what to call Her: is it science-fiction? A drama? A romantic comedy? Some strange combination of the three? Her is a film which stares at genre titles and conventions and has a good laugh in their face. Of course, this movie sprung from the mind of Spike Jonze, that strangely soulful cinematic poet who explored the fractured humanity of a little boy in Where the Wild Things Are, gave us the strange fever-dream Being John Malkovich, and blessed the world with the darkly comic and deeply odd Adaptation. There isn’t a contemporary that it could have possibly sprung forth from, only from the deliciously inventive imagination of Jonze.

Here is a film that takes the strangeness of online dating, social media, and friendships which exist purely through the computer screen and examines them from several different angles. It doesn’t take much to see the heart and soul beneath the polished surfaces, and the world of the film feels both strangely familiar and like worn in fantasy. We believable that this world is entirely plausible, and that in a few more years, the world of Her could easily be the real world outside of the cinema.

I didn’t think that a movie about a man falling in love with a piece of software would be so touching to me going in, but I left having felt something deeply about the human condition. Once more, Joaquin Phoenix gives a complex performance in what has slowly emerged as my favorite movie of the year. Last year, it was his animalistic portrayal of a broken man in Paul Thomas Anderson’s hypnotic character study The Master. Here is another broken man, but this one is on the cusp of healing and changing for the better.

Phoenix plays Theodore, a man who makes his living penning vividly detailed, poignant, touching, and emotional honesty letters for people based on the most basic of details his clients have given him. The irony in all of this is that his character finds it easier to express emotions for other people, or behind the veil of technology and screen names, than he does for himself. He’s in the final stages of a divorce (Rooney Mara in a small role, but one that proves she’s an actress for picking daring subject matter and nailing the nuance of a scene), but cannot bring himself to sign off on the divorce papers. Into his life comes the software that will learn-and-grow along with him, a computer operating system that will help him get his life in order and reestablish his emotional footing.

We’re already dealing with some delicate and emotional material based purely on the set-up, and Jonze keeps that momentum up as the story unfolds. Trying to get back into the dating world is a disaster, his best friends end their marriage, and he slowly begins to fall in love with his operating system, Samantha (voiced to perfection by Scarlett Johnansson). Again, I know all of this sounds incredibly strange, and maybe it is and I’m just very weird, but I found it easy to empathize with Theodore’s confusion and emotional loneliness. Her takes a solid look at the evolving nature of relationships – the growth, decay, and the struggles to pick up the pieces and move on – not just romantic, but the relationships we have with ourselves and our friends.

I don’t know what kind of alchemy Jonze performs to get such tender yet quirky performances out of his actors, but god I do love him for it. Phoenix’s range is a marvel. Just comparing his performance in The Master to this is enough to let you know he’s one of our great working actors. From the adventure-seeking, death-defying, pure id of Freddie in one film, to suddenly turn around and be introspective, quiet, then bloom into a happier, more extroverted person is the wonder of a great artist doing their magic. Amy Adams plays his supportive best friend, herself a recent victim of a broken relationship and its devastating aftermath. My god, look at Adams’s work within the past year: tough and spunky as Lois Lane in Man of Steel, sexy and scheming in American Hustle (a career-high in a career full of great performances), and here as a supportive, nonjudgmental, open-hearted woman. That is a great amount of range.

No less terrific in smaller roles are Rooney Mara as Theodore’s ex-wife, who appears winsome and waif-like in the flashbacks to happier times in their relationship, before appearing freaked out and passive-aggressive about learning of Theodore’s relationship to Samantha, and Olivia Wilde as a blind date gone horribly wrong. She appears as a blond goddess, but quickly descends into a strange mixture of ugly neediness and desperation for emotional stability. Bill Hader, Brian Cox and Kristen Wiig make vocal cameos are various callers in on-line sex chats and operating systems. Wiig’s bit is especially twisted and hilarious, and I won’t dare spoil the good fun of it.

And now we must talk about Johansson’s vocal performance of Samantha. A lot was written about how she’s deserving of recognition in the supporting actress field during awards season. I agree. Voice acting, when truly done right and not the lazy celebrity vocal work of say DreamWorks films, can hit you just as well as seeing a real person emote. And the development of Samantha, from standoffish automaton to inquisitively soaking up knowledge to developing at a rate beyond comprehension, offers Johansson a chance to stretch her vocal muscles. Without a Samantha we could believe in, Her would fail, thrown onto the pyre of well-intentioned but disastrous exercises.

At the end of Her I walked away feeling like this film was truly pushing onto the idea that our love affair with the newest and latest technology was about more than just finding new, expensive ways to partake in conspicuous consumption and waste time. These machines are simultaneously bringing us together and apart, and just reinforces the notion that while we may enjoy being alone, none of us want to be lonely.