![]() Jonze is a visionary whose lyrical, soulful meditation on relationships of the future cuts to the heart of the way we live now. Johansson’s vocal tour de force is award-worthy. Not unlike a man falling in love with his pornography collection or a woman with. Kudos to Scarlett Johansson, who speaks Samantha in tones sweet, sexy, caring, manipulative and scary. In the new Spike Jonze movie Her, a man in the process of divorcing falls in love with a computer operating system. ![]() The catch is she’s his computer’s operating system and knows him better than anyone she’s programmed that way. No wonder Theodore feels he’s found the perfect woman in Samantha. Spike Jonze was already well into the process of making Her, his new film starring Joaquin Phoenix as a man who falls for an artificial. His best friend (an excellent Amy Adams) is distracted by her work as a video-game maker. Joaquin Phoenix, in a deeply felt performance abounding in grace notes, plays Theodore Twombly, who writes letters online for people who can’t express their feelings. In his fourth feature, following Being John Malkovich, Adaptation and Where the Wild Things Are, director Jonze (in his first original screenplay) imagines a near-future where we live green and our digital commands can become as intimate as a whisper. So I’ll tread lightly with Her, a love story between a man and technology, and a gloriously inventive gift from Spike Jonze. Jonze began with what could have been a one-joke idea, and in the course of getting it on screen, discovered the wellspring of love.Some movies need to hold their secrets close. He's not a satirist he's a romantic transcendentalist.Īlthough sci-fi teems with cautionary tales of machines growing smarter than humans and taking over the world, on the basis of Her, I think Jonze yearns on some level for what futurist Ray Kurzweil calls "the Singularity," when machines will take on human characteristics and our minds will be expanded by machines. The first time I saw Her, I was disappointed that director Spike Jonze didn't explore the Big Brother aspect, or the way whatever company created Samantha would track its users' buying habits and so forth. Every image is colored by emotion - and by the longing to break free of one's limited self and merge with another being. But mostly we're in Theodore's head, and Jonze creates a lyrical, impressionistic palette. Amy Adams plays a friend of Theodore's who designs computer games and has her own relationship problems. Theodore and Samantha aren't the only show in Her. This unconventional love story blends science fiction and romance in a sweet tale that explores the nature of love and the ways that technology isolates and connects. So Theodore feels her moving beyond his grasp - like many real lovers move on, in life. ![]() Samantha has spiritual needs, a drive to find new realms of communication. People eagerly embrace a new kind of OS - what an ad calls "an intuitive entity that listens to you and understands you and knows you."Īnd Samantha continues to evolve, which you can hear - yes, hear. When Her begins, it doesn't seem as if it's going to be a romance but a sci-fi social satire, set in an unspecified future Los Angeles in which the architecture has no connection to people - they stroll through faceless plazas gazing into electronic devices, talking to unseen listeners. I certainly identify with the protagonist, Theodore Twombly, who falls in love with his computer operating system, his OS, which calls itself - sorry, I gotta say " who calls herself" - Samantha, and who sounds like a breathy young woman. It's gorgeous, funny, deep - and I can hear some smart aleck say, "If you love it so much, why don't you marry it?" Let me tell you, I'd like to! Her is the best film of the year by a so-wide margin. ![]() With: Joaquin Phoenix, Amy Adams, Rooney Mara, Scarlett Johansson Rated R for language, sexual content and brief graphic nudity.
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