Just a couple of years ago Megan Ellison founded Annapurna Pictures, a company dedicated to producing and distributing experimental art films by auteur directors. You know, film projects that make the world a better place to live in, but that the big studios might not be too enthusiastic about taking a chance on. To say that the company has so far been a success would be a bit of an understatement. In less than two years Annapurna has already put out The Master by Paul Thomas Anderson, Zero Dark Thirty by Kathryn Bigelow, Spring Breakers by Harmony Korine, The Grandmaster by Wong Kar Wai, and a few others that were okay too. That’s a pretty impressive filmography for such a young company, but even given all of that success, Spike Jonze’s latest film, Her, is probably the best thing that they’ve produced yet. So that’s definitely reason to congratulate everyone involved.
Her stars Joaquin Phoenix as a neurotic sort of everyman who lives in a future version of our world where technology has advanced to the point where urban development is just a little bit more expansive, pleasing design is just a little bit more ubiquitous, and people are just a little bit more preoccupied with their mobile computing devices. Well, until the latest version of these future computers’ OS gets released—a version that’s so advanced it can pass for a real, learning consciousness with a distinct personality—then people go beyond being a little bit more preoccupied with their mobile computing devices, especially Phoenix’s Theodore, who eventually starts dating the new piece of software that’s taken over the duty of organizing his digital goings on. Her name is Samantha (as voiced by Scarlett Johansson). What follows is one part romance, one part science fiction, one part iPhone ad, but shown to us through the lens of a writer/director as visionary (eat it, Zack Snyder) as Spike Jonze, who’s talented enough to make a slightly silly concept engaging to watch on a hypnotic level.
From its very first scene, Her effortlessly sets up the world that it’s taking place in and begins to layer its story with all of the thematic depth that make these end of the year art films so much fun to watch and then pick apart afterward. We first meet Theodore at work, where he writes personal letters addressed from his clients to their loved ones, which then get printed out as lovingly hand-written prose in the handwriting of the person who has paid for the service. Instantly questions of what’s authentic and what’s just a hollow recreation bubble up to the surface, and we haven’t even met the AI that engages its user with a human personality yet. From that point on we watch Theodore as he strolls through a future version of LA, which is much more built up and transportation friendly, and is densely populated with a swarm of primary color-clad citizens who all seem to be fully engaged with the computer voices speaking to them in their ear pieces. We watch Theodore as he checks his email, cycles though his favorite melancholy songs (he’s recently been through a divorce and isn’t taking it well), checks the daily news, and ignores all of the people around him who are doing the same. This is reality as it is today, just slightly exaggerated. Right away, Her reaches down into your technology-addicted soul and makes you feel like you’re looking at your own future.
A large part of what makes the film work is that it tells the perfect sort of story to illuminate and satirize the current digital culture that we’re living in, sure, but that’s not the reason you’re seeing it on so many people’s favorite movies of 2013 lists. It’s true that this may be the perfect movie for its time and place, but that wouldn’t mean so much if it wasn’t also just really well-made from top to bottom. The film is gorgeous to look at, both in the terms of its cinematography and in terms of its production design, which seems to present to us a world where modern hipster sensibilities have become so ubiquitous that they’ve become a bit watered down and mundane, but they’ve transformed the world into something more pleasant nonetheless. Along with that aesthetic comes the reality that all of the characters we meet are overly-earnest and slightly doofy, and all of their surroundings look like locations where you’d probably like to have brunch. Gone from this world is any shred of the cynicism and sarcasm of Generation X, and in its place is the open-wound vulnerability of the Millennials.
The romance between the Theodore character and the Samantha character works as a great film romance, even with the science fiction element that hovers over everything. We believe in the relationship as it grows, we believe in the chemistry that this man finds with a disembodied voice, and eventually we come to root for them to end up together—which is a necessary trait of any screen pairing if it’s going to be viewed as successful. The full fleshing out of the romantic stuff doesn’t leave the sci-fi questions at the heart of this story to go unexplored either. The complications that would come of dating a consciousness that doesn’t have a body get fully explored, as do the complications these AIs would have trying to date a living creature who isn’t able to multi-task the way they can or learn at the rate they do.
Her has got to be one of the most fully-realized and idea-filled science fiction films we’ve gotten in a long time, but wading through all of that heady stuff doesn’t ever become work like it can be in some of the nerdier entries in the genre, because you’re always charmed by the performers (Phoenix and Johansson both really go for it, and are great), dazzled by the visuals, and laughing at the humor that got layered into the script. That’s right, Her is funny too. Like, really funny, all the way through its run time. What Jonze has been able to create here is a broadly entertaining movie that still feels a bit left of center in its conception and that still explores some brain-bending concepts, but that comes in a package that can still be palatable to the mainstream. It’s like he mixed the high-concept plotting of Being John Malkovich with the pure emotion at the heart of Where the Wild Things Are, and the two go together surprisingly well.
When it’s all said and done though, what people are likely going to remember most about this film is its exploration of human relationships, and what it says about the way we love. At first it feels like Her is going to be subversive because it posits that an advanced enough computer program could be a good enough substitute for human interaction, but as it goes on it actually begins to say more about the way we connect with other people than it does the way we connect with machines. The true subversion here may be its message of dependence, and its assertion that one mind alone will never be enough to attain contentment.
Theodore’s story is one that’s swimming in longing and desire, and he’s a character who’s always desperately clawing and clinging toward some sort of connection with something outside of himself—to the point where a monogamous relationship just may never be enough for him. In a world where we are increasingly becoming more interconnected due to the advancement of digital communication technology, where our attention is increasingly becoming more divided amongst a constantly incoming flow of messages and notifications, are we going to have to change the way we dole out love from a system that has traditionally been very exclusive to a new one that is more open, free to everyone, and that comes with less feelings of attachment? The ideas that Her sends swimming through your head sound downright Buddhist when you start blurting them all out like that. Who could have guessed that the thing that finally ends the desire and clinging at the root of human suffering might end up being our smartphones? Spike Jonze, I guess, which makes Her one of the more complex and interesting fictional looks at the way humans and machines interact that we’ve ever gotten.
