Not since LARS AND THE REAL GIRL has there been such a venerable entertainment about virtual romance as HER (MA).
While Lars found his blow up doll on the internet, HER hero, Theodore, cuts to the chase and falls for his newly purchased cyber operating system.
Devastated by his recent divorce, Theodore devotes nearly all his energy into his work as a letter writer, a commercial Cyrano de Bergerac, and occasionally sees long-time friends Amy and Charles. But it’s the sultry seductive voice of Samantha, his operating system that stirs his heart strings. An artificial intelligence that is warm, witty, talented, – so what if she does not have a body; cerebral sex seems to supersede the tactile.
Spike Jonez, director of BEING JOHN MALKOVICH and ADAPTATION, has fashioned an ingenious script that makes HER an undeniable treasure. Joaquin Phoenix is marvelous as Theodore, neither nerd nor metro, an endearing personality with an engaging empathy illustrated so brilliantly in his vocational writing.
His proxy penmanship is a throwback virtual communication uncannily contrasted with his ultra-modern embracing of Samantha, simpatico spirits in the art of conversation.
As exquisite as their combined colloquialism is, aspects arise you could attribute to lost in translation/lost in transmission – the difference between human and machine, of the terrestrial and the temporal, actual over artificial intelligence. Jealousy, insecurity, the foibles that make us so vulnerably human are activated in Theodore and emphatically not empathised by Samantha.
Scarlett Johansson’s vibrant and vivacious vocalisation of Samantha is a veritable triumph, a virtuoso turn of articulation and modulation, as seductive to the audience as it most assuredly is to Theodore.
This is what Jonez is zeroing in on – the seduction of cyberspace, the allure of the artificial, forsaking the flesh and blood in favour of the virtual and the vicarious – the fault dear Theodore is not in our stars, or our operating systems, but in ourselves. We cannot fail to be human with all the human frailties that come with the condition.
A cat among the pigeonholed, HER defies easy categorisation – rom com, sci fi, cautionary tale, – all of these and more.
Supporting Phoenix and Johansson is an impressive line-up of on screen and voice talent.
Playing Theodore’s ex, Rooney Mara is terrific in tart and telling flashback and his solace succoring soul mate, Amy, is played by Amy Adams in another admirable performance.
Olivia Wilde is wildly impressive as a blind date with Theodore, the culmination of which is a frisson of fragility, figuratively drawbridge down on brittle battlements.
Voices off, the production boasts the vibrant resonance of Kristen Wiig and Brian Cox .
Deploying director of photography Hoyte van Hoytema to shoot HER, Jonez has assembled the designers from all his previous pictures – production designer K K Barrett and costume designer Casey Storm to collaborate and create a sumptuous looking film, a complimentary blend of the visual and the vocal.
An altogether satisfying cinematic experience- articulate, eloquent, and imaginative – HER is worth keeping up with the Jonez.
HER opens at cinemas this Thursday, Jan 16.