New York Film Festival 2013

[Chris Knipp]

SPIKE JONZE: HER (2013)


Joaquin Phoenix in Her

A mechanized rom-com that goes soft

Her takes us to a futuristic LA deftly constructed using exteriors shot in Shanghai. It's a pretty, pastel world. But there's small fun in it because its inhabitants, made up chiefly of thirty-somethings, can't relate. The protagonist, Theodore (Joaquin Phoenix) is a neutral, mustachioed sad sack. He's a sweet fellow, as we're told and shown way too often, whose job, a variation on Miss Lonelyhearts, consists of spending all day writing (sweet) customized letters for people that are made up by a computer to look handwritten. That's odd, because people don't write letters much any more. Maybe that's why they need a professional to write them. But if nobody writes them, why bother? This is a Spike Jonze world of high concepts, with the hard edge, and a lot of the smarts, that Jonze is known for excised. Her is a soft, sentimental movie that's too little critical of the commitment- and relationship-averse world of today's American thirty-somethings. It certainly does illustrate what Thoreau wrote as long ago as Walden: "We are become the tools of our tools." But it offers no criticism of that development, either.

Theodore is smarting from the process of a divorce after eight years with Catherine (Rooney Mara) who's really awesome -- a word that comes up, like, once too often. He's lonely, but, well, you know. He's afraid to be with a real woman. So how lucky he is to take possession of a new computer operating system (OS) designed to keep him company just like a real person, without being one. At his request the OS has a woman's voice (Scarlett Johansson's) and at its own initiative its (her) name is Samantha. And we're off and running. Props to Phoenix and Johansson for acting in a void: they never meet corporeally on screen. It would be mean to say Johansson phones in her performance, because that's all she's allowed to do. And if Phoenix's acting is flat, all he's got to relate to most of the time is a cell phone or a computer screen.

Samantha develops apace, and so does Theodore's dependence on her. Before long they're having hot virtual sex. I've never quite understood how that works. But it works in a movie. River Phoenix goes through his paces smoothly, skirting the borderline (as he so often does) between normal and creepy. An effort at a blind date (with Olivia Wilde) ends badly. But his comfort in the company of Samantha cheers Theodore up so much he has the courage to meet with Catherine for her to sign the divorce papers. Theodore declares that he is in love with Samantha. He dares to tell his co-worker in the letter-writing business that his girlfriend is an OS -- it's not uncommon nowadays -- and the co-worker and his girlfriend, Theodore, and Samantha go out on dates together. Would this be like going out with a really, really handicapped person? But that's just a wicked thought; it's not in the movie.

Theodore's best friend, Amy (Amy Adams) is ditched by her longtime companion Charles (Matt Letscher), and that brings Theodore and Amy closer together -- and allows more space for talk about relationships, how much they're needed and how hard they are to maintain, how much it hurts when they end. About these things, this movie has nothing new to say, but goes on saying it -- rather than showing it, which would have been preferable.

But this is, of course, a new twist as romantic comedies go. And Her's crisp, pretty look and briskly handled actors make it a thoroughly pro effort. Just don't expect much in the way of science fiction, because the rom-com part takes the lead. Choosing to make Samantha sound just like a regular girl all through, Jonze wastes the opportunity to develop odd events that might occur relating to artificial intelligence -- the kind of tiny glitches you'd expect him to have fun with. There's not much fun here. The "aw shucks!" and "gee whiz!" buttons are pushed down all the way, with not a moment to inject darkness or sharp wit. The film plays around a bit with computer games -- Theodore has one, and Amy is designing a high-concept (but lame) one about a champion competitive "mom." The twee factor rises there, but the humor remains limp, overwhelmed by cuteness and sadness. Miranda July is one of the friends Jonze consults with on his movies? That makes sense.

Ultimately of course the computer love affair fails just as human ones do, because the couple, never having been together in real space to begin with and being of different species, easily drifts apart. Samantha (whose name comes from the part being originally planned for Samantha Morton) is of course independently connected to the Internet. She also possesses a vast memory. Gradually she hooks up with a host of other CS's, as well as a computerized recreation of the brain of Zen philosopher Alan Watts,, and turns out to be too big for Theodore alone. She's sort of all things to all people, and like God, but not quite, because only a megalomaniac would be jealous because God is omnipresent and omniscient, but with Samantha, for Theodore, it sort of hurts that she's turning out to be that way.

Those developments might have been fascinating if they had happened more and earlier, but they just usher in the end. After a while, the soppy truisms about love and relationships really get old, and for us, that hurts too. With Jonze doing all the writing, without Charlie Kaufman or even Dave Eggers channeling Maurice Sendak, everything just turns to treacle. There reportedly was a 90-minute edit done by Steven Soderbergh from Jonze's two-and-a-half-hour version, which might have been good to see. But Jonze only cut half an hour.

Her, 119 mins., had its world premiere as the closing night film of the New York Film Festival at Lincoln Center, 12 Oct. 2013, when it was screened for this review. Nominal release 18 Dec. 2013; regular US and Uk release, 10 Jan. 2014.