Her

When it comes to movies about romance, relationships, and love, many different approaches have been taken and a lot of times we find the same stories being rehashed and tossed upon us.  We get the same, uninspired films about love that are more based off of the concept of passion than off of genuine care and commitment.  Her, written and directed by Spike Jonze, approaches it all from a bit of a different angle, and in fact looks at human social interaction with each other as well.

The plot of the movie is that our protagonist Theodore (Joaquin Phoenix) is recovering from his marriage ending and is beginning to understand his own social faults that assisted in the failed relationship with his wife, Catherine (Rooney Mara).  The character of Theodore is indeed a complex one and is captured by Phoenix who delivers vividly the essence of someone who craves love and to enjoy the adventure of the fullness of life but is incapable of true openness and honesty.   It is set in the not so distant future, and onto the market comes an artificially intelligent operating system, which Theodore ends up installing on his computer, which gives birth to Samantha (Scarlett Johansson), the identity that the operating system assumes.  Theodore develops a connection with Samantha, and a romance begins between the two of them.

While the plot is a little far-fetched, it is brought out in the movie easily in a way that does not cost a huge degree of suspension of disbelief from the audience.  We end up seeing a lot of scenes that physically only consist of Joaquin Phoenix, but the dialogue between the two, as well as the delivery of their lines, creates the reality that Samantha is indeed there.  This is a very important hurdle that the movie needed to get over, because without Samantha properly coming to life for the audience, the movie is doomed to fail.  Spike Jonze needs to be credited greatly for the achievement of this, as well as the wonderfully nuanced performance of Phoenix, and the voice acting of Johansson who allows a great depth of emotion to be inserted into her delivery.

While we are watching this oddly formed relationship grow, we see the same struggles undergone that all people end up running into.  Perhaps this commentary by Jonze that there is no perfect mate that technology can create, that even the best advancements in science still fail in the same areas as humans do.  The couple runs into intimacy issues, hidden feelings, jealousy, and everything that is likely to poke its head into the lifespan of a couple.

While Theodore is going through this, his friend Amy (Amy Adams) is suffering through her own relational sufferings and also turns to the companionship of an artificially intelligent friend.  It is easy to watch this film and criticize the ridiculous foundation on which it is based, but do humans not do this sort of thing already?  In some ways, are some people not already married to their phones, tablets, or computers?  Do some people related better to others through electronic media than they do face to face?  How much more crazy is simply adding the AI aspect of the film, and does it actually rationalize the obsession with technological relationships better than any argument than we currently have?

Ultimately this film ponders on our connection with technology and how perhaps that changes us, as we get scenes of people just walking through crowds, amoungst other humans, but just buried into their own portable devices.  When the technology is gone, when we let it go, what beautiful and wonderful things are there for us?  Spike Jonze looks at all of this with a lot of heart and passion, pointing to the complexities of the human experience and the beauty of growth and companionship that our world, both aided by and with the absence of technology, has for us to embrace.

Rating - 3.5 out of 4 stars