Her – review
Joaquin Phoenix in Spike Jonze’s Her. Photograph: Sportsphoto Ltd/Warner Bros
Joaquin Phoenix plays an unlucky-in-love writer who finds solace then romance with a hyper-intelligent operating system in Spike Jonze’s quirky new film. This is Her in a nutshell and 10 years ago this might have sounded like a far-fetched sci-fi film, but in our smart-phone generation it doesn’t seem too far a stretch.
Although set in the future (2025) this futuristic rom-com feels almost current. Jonze is not so much giving us an outlandish vision of the future, but instead a relatable near-future LA, in which mobile phone technology has just moved on at a believable rate and everyone is organising their work and life via a Siri-style application. This presented world, with its flashy tech and people’s gazes fixated on screens and with gizmos in their ears, doesn’t look much different from current city life, apart from the fact that most people seem to be wearing high-waisted and ankle-swinging trousers.
The concept of someone having a relationship with a talking gadget doesn’t seem as crazy as it might sound, especially with the amount we communicate these days via our computers and with online dating being almost mainstream. The big futurist leap is the new ‘OS1’, which comes on the market in Her’s LA life and the already curious Theodore [Joaquin Phoenix], our protagonist, is intrigued by its claim of being an artificially intelligent system that is matched to the user’s preferences and character, which can be the ultimate organisational and social device. Unlike the previous Siri-like app, which simply does what people tell it to do and uses their voice commands to give faster and smoother operationality, the OS1 can be intuitive and adaptable to your needs and actually serves genuine two-way conversation.
Theodore has recently broken up with his wife Catherine [Rooney Mara] – they are in divorce proceedings – and has become a bit reclusive, and his friend Amy [Amy Adams] has been encouraging him to go on dates. He is reluctant, but after a disappointing experience with online sex-talk sessions (an amusing opening-scene) he agrees to go on an arranged date with a pretty lady [Olivia Wilde]. It seems to be going well, but when the night turns intimate both her apparent neurosis and Theodore’s awkwardness quickly turn the date sour. That’s pretty much the set-up for our acceptance that Theodore will end up finding it easier to talk to and engage with his operating system, Samantha [Scarlet Johansson], than with real women.
He works for BeautifulHandWrittenLetters.com, where his role is to write emotive letters for people to loved ones which they are unable to compose themselves, suggesting that 2025 is filled with people who find it difficult to express their feelings. Ironically, Theodore struggles too – Catherine levels this criticism at him – in the outside world, but he has a special talent for these letters on behalf of others.
Soon Samantha and Theodore find they have fun ‘together’ and there is chemistry between them (of sorts), and their computer-to-human relationship becomes romantic. You’ll have to watch the film to get to grips with this scenario, but it recalls Charlie Brooker’s dystopian TV drama Black Mirror, in particular an episode called ‘Be Right Back’, in which a woman uses a new app that enables her to continue her relationship with her dead partner via a computerised version of her loved one built with all the digital memory and history of their communications.
The difference here is that the OS1 is not just a predictive device from a matrix of data, but an AI system that digitally evolves. Jonze poses several questions amidst this genuinely touching tale about relationships and honesty. Can love between a computer and human really work? Will it suffer similar issues to traditional relationships, such as jealousy, insecurity, distrust? Does love between man and machine represent a ‘real’ relationship? Will the OS1’s vast capabilities stay compatible with the human partner?
Some viewers may be disappointed that Her doesn’t fully explore the complexity of the sci-fi element in the plot and bemoan the lack of off-the-wall content seen in his earlier films like Being John Malkovich and Adaptation, for which Charlie Kaufman wrote the stories. If Kaufman had written Her rather than Jonze, we might have seen something closer to Michael Gondry’s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (which Kaufman co-wrote with Gondry), but this film is not as surreal or as clever. However, Jonze has penned and directed a more subtle gem, which is both beautiful and dreamy, and Joaquin Phoenix has again reminded audiences (if we needed reminding) of his talent in not only playing troubled characters, but in producing pitch-perfect emotive performances.
Her is showing at the Hackney Picturehouse throughout February and March.