Her

Runtime:  1 hour, 59 minutes
Rating: R
Director: Spike Jonze

Quick Impressions:
My husband and I went to Her because it’s finally out here and because we expect it to be an Oscar contender and because we’d heard it was brilliant, but honestly both of us were a little reluctant.

“I just can’t see how it won’t be weird,” my husband kept saying, each time noting, “Joaquin Phoenix is always weird.”  (He laughed so hard at Tina Fey’s joke at the Golden Globes, “One of my favorite films this year is the movie Her which takes place in the not-so-distant future, which is perfect because so does Joaquin Phoenix.”)

“I just don’t see how they can sustain that premise for two hours,” I kept saying.  The previews make it seem so maudlin and self-impressed and solipsistic and aware that it’s cool.  (You get the idea that it’s just some sensitive guy walking around a city for two hours thinking, I’m so awesome because all I do is listen to Arcade Fire and fall in love with a device that’s an extension of my own consciousness and parrots my ideas back at me.)  It looked humorless and strange to me.

But when we actually watched the movie, we were glad to be wrong as we quickly discovered that Her is indeed a fantastic film deserving of all the recognition it’s been getting recently.

The Good:
As a said, I went into the movie fearing it would be strange.  But as it turns out, it’s not strange at all.  It’s just Pygmalion with an OS.

(I’m not sure if I should italicize that or not.  In the car afterwards, I raved at my husband, “About halfway through, I wasn’t sure if it was just going to have this Pygmalion thing going on, or if it was actually going to end like Pygmalion—I mean the play, you know, not the story from antiquity.”  After I rambled on like this for about ten minutes, he quietly informed me, “I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about.  I have never heard of Pygmalion.”)

Pygmalion is a classical story (the most well known version’s in Ovid) about a sculptor who falls in love with the statue he has created.  Much later on, George Bernard Shaw wrote a play called Pygmalion about a professor of elocution who falls in love with the lady he has created, but far more people know Lerner and Loewe’s musical adaptation of Shaw’s stage play, My Fair Lady.

Anyway, Her is definitely operating within the Pygmalion tradition.  It’s like a sci-fi spin on the basic story with a bit more emphasis placed on why the man creates the woman than usual.  (It would be like My Fair Lady if we were constantly focusing on the reactions and motivations of Rex Harrison, and Audrey Hepburn were entirely reduced to Marni Nixon’s voice.)

This is a very cerebral movie, but it also has heart.  It’s material designed to set off fruitful philosophical discussions among friends interested in existentialism, the nature of consciousness, ontology, love.

(It’s funny because now I’m thinking of a philosophy professor describing in a college course how Descartes ripped the limbs off cats or something, arguing that they just cried out the way a tea kettle whistles and felt no pain.  I’m going to have to look into this further because it seems highly relevant to the film if I’m remembering accurately.)

Actually, the film is kind of like a cross between Pygmalion and E.T.  I’ve heard people praising it as a risky, artistic, thoughtful film, but until I saw it, I really didn’t realize it was attempting to be great sci-fi.  I mean, obviously, yes, it’s set in the future.  And obviously it involves artificial intelligence.  But the previews suggest more of a quirky art film than the next Blade Runner.  And as I first started watching, Her really didn’t have the feel I usually associate with sci-fi.  By the end, however, it was clear that the movie was, indeed, science fiction, science fiction with a far more coherent, consistent premise and plotline than most of the cinematic sci-fi we’ve been getting lately.

This movie has the feeling of greatness because not only does it address timeless, universal issues all tied up in what it means to be human, what it means to connect, what it means to be, but also because it addresses certain realities that seem incredibly topical and of the moment.  What I mean is, human beings have always been asking, “Who am I?” and “Who are you?” and “Can I know you?” and “What are we together?” and so forth, but it’s also true that at this specific moment in history, you can always find people wandering through crowds oblivious to their surroundings while having intense conversations on their cell phones.

Her takes place in the Los Angeles of the future.  It took me a while to figure that out.  I knew it was set in the future, and I thought it was in California, but at first I was confused because some of the buildings were so unfamiliar.  I kept thinking, That looks like a blend of several cities.  Have several cities in California joined together in his time?  What city is that exactly?

Then my helpful brain remembered the episode of Arrested Development when as a cover story, Maebe tells her family she’s on a debate trip in Sacramende.  Unfortunately, my mind latched onto that idea, and for the rest of the movie, every time Theodore looked out on the city skyline, I thought, It’s Sacramende!  (This sometimes caused me to titter inappropriately.)

I guess it’s fortunate that I was sitting next to my husband who also found plenty to be (inappropriately) amused about.  (During the scene when Theodore takes Samantha to the beach, he leaned over and whispered to me, “Wouldn’t it be funny if this whole project started when a movie camera followed around Joaquin Phoenix for a day while he was just being himself, and then later they built a story around what happened to make sense of it?  I keep thinking that.”)

Lest you think we were unduly obnoxious, I should say that we spent most of the movie not laughing inappropriately.  Actually several scenes are quite touching (an important word in this love story in which one of the lovers is a consciousness with no corporeal body.)

And then, too, several scenes are intentionally funny.  (And the best part is, the scenes intending to be funny actually are.  Large portions of the audience laughed out loud several times.)  Some of the humor is truly off-the-wall.  Have you seen Adaptation?  If (like me) you find the absurdity (and ironic meta callbackyness) of Meryl Streep’s swamp antics late in the film engaging and hilarious, then surely you’ll also like the type of humor that abounds in this film.  (I know Charlie Kaufman wrote Adaptation and Spike Jonze wrote the screenplay for this one himself, but I still think the humor is similar.  The big difference is, this film is more consistently amusing.)

If you watched the Golden Globes (and I sure hope you did because they were extra crazy this year!  Everyone had to follow the golden thread through the Labyrinth to get to the stage, and nobody (but Cate Blanchett) seemed aware of the possibility that if you’re nominated, you might win!  The arbitrary, illogical, insane way they separate comedies from dramas is always hilarious, but this year, the stars seemed complicit in the insanity of it all!  It was wonderful!)

Anyway, if you watched the Golden Globes, then you know Her won Best Screenplay.  (Of course, if you’ve ever watched the Globes in the past, you know that really means nothing when it comes to Oscars.)  I think the win was deserved in this case, and I’d like to see Her get a screenplay nomination from the Academy on Thursday morning.

I also really liked the score, and I’ve had a problem connecting with scores this year.  Normally I have a clear idea which score will win at the Oscars, and it seems obvious to me why the win is deserved.  But this year, many of the scores nominated for earlier awards don’t seem all that special to me, and scores I’ve liked have gone overlooked.  Finally Her has changed all that.

I think Her’s score is definitely one of the best I’ve heard all year, so I hope it gets nominated.  Based on how inexorably it’s intertwined with the telling of the story, I personally think it deserves to win, but we’ll see.

I also think the little song has a shot at being nominated (though I hope “Let it Go” wins for my daughter’s sake.  She was so crushed when “Ordinary Love” won at the Globes, despite the fact that I’d told her repeatedly that would probably happen.  (That was actually the only category I felt comfortable predicting.  I mean, Nelson Mandela just died, and they gave it to U2 before for “The Hands that Built America,” which was not their greatest work, and “Ordinary Love” is their best song in a long, long time.  Granted, that’s just my opinion, but U2 is my favorite group, so I actually have a rare musical opinion that’s grounded in knowledge of all of the group’s songs.)

My husband and I agree that Joaquin Phoenix deserves a Best Actor nomination, though we doubt he’ll get it.  (Frankly, I hope he doesn’t because the category is so crowded with deserving contenders, and I’d rather see DiCaprio or Bale in a slot that might go to Phoenix.  There’s not room for all three of them, or, really, even for two of them.)

I’m not sure (based on her competition) if Scarlett Johansson truly deserves an supporting nomination this year, but part of me wishes they’d give it to her just to set a precedent.  (The Academy is very stubborn and weird about not considering actors who don’t appear onscreen.  It’s really almost criminal that the talented Andy Serkis has never been nominated.  Nominating a voice-only performance seems like a step in the right direction.)

I personally hope that Amy Adams will get nominated for Best Actress for American Hustle.  (Of course, I haven’t seen Meryl Streep yet, so I can’t say that Adams deserves it more than Streep.  I will say that I think Cate Blanchett, Judi Dench, Sandra Bullock, and Emma Thompson all deserve it just as much and maybe more than Adams.)  I really love Amy Adams, though, and it surprises me that there hasn’t been more buzz for her supporting performance here.  I think she gets all the best lines in the film, to be honest.  (Or maybe they just seem like the best lines because of the masterful way she delivers them.)

Even though they won’t get Oscar attention, the rest of the supporting cast is also great, particularly Chris Pratt and Rooney Mara.  Olivia Wilde is good, too, though her character is a nightmare, and in a small but memorable role, Portia Doubleday definitely makes an impression.

Best Action Sequence:
There’s a great scene near the end when Theodore is running around frantically looking for something.  Because of Phoenix’s intensity, the scene really captivates us.

Best Scene Visually:
This film has nice, consistent look.  The future seems to be all about interesting skylines, high-waisted pants, and smog.  Her definitely offers us a vivid portrait of Theodore Twombly’s world.  So many of the scenes seem deeply imbued in meaning (calling them symbolic isn’t exactly accurate.  Thematic is nearer the mark, but I think what I’m really getting at is they’re more like mood pieces.  The film uses its visuals in the same way that Samantha intends the music she composes.)

What I loved best were the scenes of nature.  Both my husband and I were fans of that ominous owl (it reminded of the hawk I chased around with my camera all afternoon, while my five-year-old sighed accurately, “You’re never going to catch that hawk!”)  I also particularly liked the melting ice sickles.

I should probably mention, too, that the urban landscape and the wilderness are definitely being used to mean something greater than themselves.  There’s something kind of Shakespearean going on there, but I’d have to watch the film again to tell you precisely how it works.

From a purely visual standpoint, surely the most memorable scene is the one where we don’t see anything if only because it drags on for such a long time, and that’s so unusual.

Best Scene:
I like the last scene in the movie the best.  We’re left with a very deliberate image and (more importantly, I think), two very deliberate sounds (or, rather, the same deliberate sound twice).  This ends the movie perfectly and makes a point I can readily embrace.

Funniest Scene:
When the end credits rolled, I realized with a giggle, Ohhh, that was Kristen Wiig!  Of course!  Who else could have pulled that off?  Nudging my husband, I squealed in glee, “Oh look, her name was SexyKitten.”

Without a doubt, the scene in the late night chat room is the funniest in the film.  (To be brutally honest, it’s probably my favorite scene, too, simply because the humor was so unexpected and refreshing.  Based on the preview, I’d been worried the film would be nothing but two hours of self-indulgent soliloquys set to maudlin music (plus maybe thirty seconds of Joaquin Phoenix twirling around like a giddy idiot at some kind of carnival).  But the preview does the film a disservice.  Her is far from humorless, and the jokes actually get big laughs.

Watching this scene reminded me fondly of my ill-fated early exploits in chat rooms back when I was in college.  On my first try, I discovered to my absolute shock that the listed topic in any given chat room didn’t matter.  Everybody in every chat room just wanted to do one of two things 1) Have cybersex 2) Arrange to hook up in person and have real sex.  Whether the room was supposedly devoted to movies, books, sports, even religion, it didn’t matter.  (I’d been in the religion room for just thirty seconds before being graphically propositioned by someone using the handle SundaySchoolAss.)  The stated topics were totally irrelevant.  The actual discussions were all about sex in every single chat room.

Except one.

The X-Files chat room was a hive of feverish activity where everyone was actually talking about The X-Files.  I will never forget that.

Anyway this scene is pretty amazing because it’s genuinely humorous in a way that is totally unexpected and reassuring.  (The film’s premise seems so limited in the previews, but this scene reassured me that the writing wasn’t going to be lazy or dull.)

On the car ride home, my husband remarked, “So how many films are we going to see this month that set up a Schrödinger’s cat joke?”  Seriously, it seems to be happening like every week.  (His actual joke was hilarious, but if I repeat it here, I’ll spoil the scene.)

Most Oscar Worthy Moment (Amy Adams):
The phone sex scene is hilarious, but the funniest line in the film is actually delivered by Amy Adams’s character (conveniently named Amy).  It was so unexpected (smart, though) that it cracked us up completely.  At the time, it seems like a throwaway joke.  Later my husband realized it was also foreshadowing (in a way).  It comes when Amy and Theodore are discussing new relationships in her office.

Adams delivers all her lines well, and I came to look forward to her scenes.  The dialogue she’s given is wonderful, and it seems like she has all the best lines in the movie.  After a while, I found myself wondering, Could that be because she’s delivering the lines so well?

Seriously, I left this movie thinking, I would really love to have a long conversation with Amy Adams some time.  Granted, she’s just delivering the lines.  She didn’t write them.  But you can’t bring lines to life like that unless you understand what you’re talking about.  She’s very, very good here, playing a character unlike any I’ve ever seen from her before.  The people who once complained so relentlessly that she has no range are clearly insane.

Most Oscar Worthy Moment (Joaquin Phoenix):
Phoenix is at his best when he’s reading the letters he’s writing.  (I agree with my husband that his line of work is very intriguing.  He found it the most interesting aspect of the whole movie.)

Again, I like the script.  I love the line he has about worrying that he will never feel anything new again.  That description of depression (though he doesn’t call it depression) really resonated it with me.  So much of the stuff Phoenix has to say could come off sounding pretentious and inauthentic with the wrong delivery.  But Theodore always seems like a very real guy.  (He seems like somebody you might meet in grad school, actually.)

There’s much to love about Phoenix’s fine performance.  When he’s sitting on the stairs having a conversation with Samantha near the end, I really felt for him.

Most Oscar Worthy Moment (Scarlett Johansson):
If Scarlet Johansson failed to compel us with her voice, this movie would be horrible.  I kept finding myself wondering, Would Theodore still fall in love with her if she sounded like…I don’t know… Stephen Hawking?  I mean, obviously Samantha has an amazing mind, but how much does it help that she has a sexy, appealing voice?  (I mean, I realize that the scene with Wiig is in there to emphasize that a sexy, appealing voice is not everything, but still.)

My husband read the other day that Johansson was not involved in the film until the very end, which must mean that Phoenix made us all believe he was in love with Samantha without ever once hearing Johansson’s voice (making his performance even more impressive).  But I don’t think the film would work for the audience if we heard a voice that was less warm and appealing than Johansson’s.

Some of her very strongest moments come when they’re on vacation, near the end.

Johansson does fine work here, and a supporting actress nomination for her would be exciting, though actually I think Amy Adams gives a better performance (and, somewhat strangely, has a better part).

The Negatives:
Her was much better than I expected.  The ending in particular impressed me because it actually went somewhere.  For a while in the middle, I was worried.  I sat there thinking, Is he going to make all the mistakes with the operating system that he made with humans?  Does it even matter if the relationship is real if he can’t commit to it either way?  Where can this possibly go?  If he gets tired of her, can he turn her off?  This seems a little boring now.  Where can this go?

I really like the fact that the screenplay doesn’t close itself off and wall itself in and die.  Instead, it starts going in another direction.  The new questions that it begins to ask only make sense.  (I mean, any relationship is reciprocal.  It involves two people.)  The thing is, the preview doesn’t even hint at these later concerns of the film, but I was so surprised and relieved when the story started asking smart questions instead of stagnating.

I will say, though, that my interest waned considerably during the second half.  I think the part of the film between signing the divorce papers and the end is too slow.  It just drags a little bit even though in the end it comes through with a rewarding finish.

For quite a while, the romance in this film disturbed me.  I was sitting there realizing, There’s a disturbing Pygmalion undertone to this.  I mean, I spend all day walking around with my daughter teaching her about the world, and we make up little songs together—but I’m not going to marry her one day.  There’s something vaguely disturbing about creating a romantic partner for oneself (a mean helping to form the identity of someone you intend to have a romantic relationship with.)

After a while though, I finally realized, Oh, okay!  This isn’t a Pygmalion undertone.  This is Pygmalion!

And that actually made it much better.  The movie doesn’t fall into the trap that I had feared.  In the end, it’s smarter and more self-aware than it initially lets on.

Still, clearly it’s very impressed with itself.  I left with the distinct impression that a good woman is hard to find, but a good man…is what really matters.  There’s this emphasis on identity formation and self-improvement that is slightly off-putting because the protagonist is a man who clearly does not understand women.  (It feels like the fantasy of an adolescent, intellectual male.)  You get the idea that what happens with Samantha might as well be what happens with every woman as far as this guy is concerned because women are just so…inscrutable or something.

Maybe I’m not being fair, and I actually don’t think the movie suggests this intentionally.  Thank God Amy Adams’s character is in the film.  She really helps by being a woman who is also a rational, compassionate, introspective human being.  But still, for me, the last act of Her takes a little too long, and at times, its tone becomes gratingly maudlin and self-indulgent.  (In other words, most of the time, the film far transcends its theatrical trailer, but then sometimes it does seem like the preview, and in those moments, it gets on my nerves a little bit.)

I’m not saying that the film is deliberately sexist.  I think the thing is that the protagonist is so self-focused and happens to be male.

After the movie, my husband remarked, “Well, I thought it was impossible, but they managed to make a movie where Joaquin Phoenix is not the weirdest person on the screen.”

“Olivia Wilde’s character was certainly a piece of work,” I agreed.

“Yeah,” he said, “but his boss…”

“Chris Pratt?”

“Yeah, that dude was the weirdest guy ever.  And Amy’s husband was weird, too.”

I guess it’s hard to fault a movie where every character is weird for pointing out, “Hey, aren’t other people weird?  And aren’t relationships weird?  And isn’t consciousness kind of weird?”

Overall:
Her is a great movie that deserves an Oscar nomination for Best Picture and probably several others, as well.  If you like Spike Jonze or Joaquin Phoenix or quirky art films or sci-fi, then you’ll definitely want to check this out.  Amy Adams and Scarlett Johansson also give fantastic performances, but I wouldn’t see the movie just for them (though if you’re an Arcarde Fire fan, it is worth going just to hear the score).  I have this strange feeling that we’ll be hearing a lot more about this excellent film in the not-so-distant future.