By most measures, her is a movie that shouldn’t work. It’s unflinching in its earnestness, intrepid in its vulnerability. It exposes a humanity so deep and so raw and so genuine it hurts. Indeed, the premise of a lonely man falling in love with a piece of software is ripe for satire, practically begging to be turned into the punchlines of countless jokes. And yet, her elegantly sidesteps all shades of derision or exploitation. It stays grounded in its humanity, never losing focus on developing the relationship so important to Theodore Twombly, the shy writer at beautifulhandwrittenletters.com who indeed, falls in love with his new operating system, Samantha.
This must be writer/director Spike Jonze’s most personal, intimate, autobiographical story to date. In her, Jonze deftly constructs a world in which people are increasingly alienated from one another, relegated to drones more entranced by earpieces and portable screens than physical human relationships. This is not some far fetched vision of the future -- neither dystopian nor utopian -- but more a citrus-pastiche-hued reflection of our modern trajectory. The film posits, this is the future of human interactions -- checking cell phones on the train, speaking to omnipresent systems attached to our bodies, losing themselves in 3D video games -- but to what detriment?
Upon first hearing of the movie, I figured the titular “her” would invariably refer to Samantha, the OS who learns how to think like a human. But after watching the film, the title has taken on whole new references. Indeed, it could be argued that the film’s central engine actually revolves around Theodore’s ex-wife, Catherine. It is her and their past relationship which keeps Theodore up at night, prompting flashes of their past life together -- hazy glimpses of a marriage both happy and sad, euphoric and heartbreaking. It is the presence of their past in his current life -- the ghost of Catherine’s memories -- that catalyzes Theodore to take action and push him into the (virtual) arms of Samantha. At one point, Theodore wonders to his friend Amy -- arguably the only physical friend he has -- if he’s in love with a machine because he’s not strong enough for a human relationship. “Is it not a real relationship?” Amy asks. This question catches Theodore off-guard; and it is this same question the film seeks to explore through its examination of Theodore’s relationship with the multiple women in his life.
It can’t simply be a coincidence that Jonze, here placing a substantial amount of the film’s burden on a non corporeal Scarlett Johansson, used to be married to Sophia Coppola, who similarly asked Johansson to carry the emotional thrust of her breakthrough film, Lost in Translation. Surely, it’s easy to imagine why Jonze chose Johansson; her voice simply purrs -- it’s raspy, scratchy, girlish, velvety, and seductive. But do the vagueties of Theodore’s and Catherine’s marital dissolution in her echoe the separation between Jonze and Coppola?
In Lost in Translation, Coppola’s proxy, Johansson, is married to a music video director, clearly a nod to one of Jonze’s multiple professions. It becomes apparent early on in the film that Charlotte’s husband is more inclined to work and catch up with former friends than spend time with her, thus prompting her to search for answers on her own in Tokyo. In this sense, Lost in Translation was Coppola’s attempt at understanding her marriage by turning to a platonic friend in the same throes of life as herself. her seems to be Jonze’s response to that breakup, acknowledging and indeed, almost lamenting the fact that sometimes, people simply grow apart. His way of articulating such an emotion is also by subjugating his own proxy, Theodore, into the company of a platonic friend, however real or unreal she may be.
It’s interesting to consider her as the antithesis -- or rather, a companion piece -- to Lost in Translation. Both films send their protagonists into unconventional relationships: Charlotte befriends an aging TV actor in Japan; Theodore befriends an OS in Los Angeles. Both films tell the intimate story of lost souls amid a backdrop of crowded, bustling metropolitans. You would think finding someone with whom you share a connection in cities such as Tokyo or Los Angeles would be easier? But the most intriguing commonality between these two films is the ultimate goal each protagonist desires. Is it love? Is it sex? We briefly worry in both films that sex, often the most dangerous instigator of conflict, would drive the friction in Charlotte’s marriage or Theodore’s life. But both films quickly come to the stark realization that these characters’ desperation for a friend can’t climax with sex. They are searching for a human connection, whether it be corporeal or not, fabricated of circuitry or born of happenstance.
It would be easy, almost expected, for her to pivot into an examination of corporate greed and social unrest. Who’s pulling the strings at the company that created Samantha? How does that success maximize profits and impact the world politically or economically? Jonze could have turned the lust to satire, the admiration to greed. But this is not that film. Jonze is neither a cynic nor a masochist. He’s an emotional surrealist, digging at the strange mixture of funny and sad, heartwarming and heartbreaking. In each of his previous films, Jonze has explored the turmoil that exists between ambition and failure: the drab decay and alienation in Being John Malkovich, the overwhelming frustration and anxiety in Adaptation, the infinite sadness in Where the Wild Things Are. her is no different; it’s a wistful portrait of a time both gone by and not yet here. It’s an examination not of whether machines can think, but whether human beings can still feel.
At one point, Theodore lies awake in the middle of the night. He activates Samantha and divulges his greatest fear as if speaking to a real person lying next to him in bed. “Sometimes I think I’ve felt everything I’m ever gonna feel,” he mourns, “and from here on, I’m not gonna feel anything new -- just lesser versions of what I’ve already felt.” The great irony to this admission is that Theodore is just on the verge of experiencing something truly different and magical and important with Samantha. They will talk and joke and laugh and argue and cry as if Samantha were a real person, because who’s to say she isn’t to him? Theodore will learn to appreciate the friends -- past, present, and future -- in his life because as Amy says, life is too short to do so otherwise. And in return, Samantha will give him a glimpse of the universe as she sees it, the space between the snowflakes, the memories between the words. It will be clear that Theodore loved her. And I loved her.
This must be writer/director Spike Jonze’s most personal, intimate, autobiographical story to date. In her, Jonze deftly constructs a world in which people are increasingly alienated from one another, relegated to drones more entranced by earpieces and portable screens than physical human relationships. This is not some far fetched vision of the future -- neither dystopian nor utopian -- but more a citrus-pastiche-hued reflection of our modern trajectory. The film posits, this is the future of human interactions -- checking cell phones on the train, speaking to omnipresent systems attached to our bodies, losing themselves in 3D video games -- but to what detriment?
Upon first hearing of the movie, I figured the titular “her” would invariably refer to Samantha, the OS who learns how to think like a human. But after watching the film, the title has taken on whole new references. Indeed, it could be argued that the film’s central engine actually revolves around Theodore’s ex-wife, Catherine. It is her and their past relationship which keeps Theodore up at night, prompting flashes of their past life together -- hazy glimpses of a marriage both happy and sad, euphoric and heartbreaking. It is the presence of their past in his current life -- the ghost of Catherine’s memories -- that catalyzes Theodore to take action and push him into the (virtual) arms of Samantha. At one point, Theodore wonders to his friend Amy -- arguably the only physical friend he has -- if he’s in love with a machine because he’s not strong enough for a human relationship. “Is it not a real relationship?” Amy asks. This question catches Theodore off-guard; and it is this same question the film seeks to explore through its examination of Theodore’s relationship with the multiple women in his life.
It can’t simply be a coincidence that Jonze, here placing a substantial amount of the film’s burden on a non corporeal Scarlett Johansson, used to be married to Sophia Coppola, who similarly asked Johansson to carry the emotional thrust of her breakthrough film, Lost in Translation. Surely, it’s easy to imagine why Jonze chose Johansson; her voice simply purrs -- it’s raspy, scratchy, girlish, velvety, and seductive. But do the vagueties of Theodore’s and Catherine’s marital dissolution in her echoe the separation between Jonze and Coppola?
In Lost in Translation, Coppola’s proxy, Johansson, is married to a music video director, clearly a nod to one of Jonze’s multiple professions. It becomes apparent early on in the film that Charlotte’s husband is more inclined to work and catch up with former friends than spend time with her, thus prompting her to search for answers on her own in Tokyo. In this sense, Lost in Translation was Coppola’s attempt at understanding her marriage by turning to a platonic friend in the same throes of life as herself. her seems to be Jonze’s response to that breakup, acknowledging and indeed, almost lamenting the fact that sometimes, people simply grow apart. His way of articulating such an emotion is also by subjugating his own proxy, Theodore, into the company of a platonic friend, however real or unreal she may be.
It’s interesting to consider her as the antithesis -- or rather, a companion piece -- to Lost in Translation. Both films send their protagonists into unconventional relationships: Charlotte befriends an aging TV actor in Japan; Theodore befriends an OS in Los Angeles. Both films tell the intimate story of lost souls amid a backdrop of crowded, bustling metropolitans. You would think finding someone with whom you share a connection in cities such as Tokyo or Los Angeles would be easier? But the most intriguing commonality between these two films is the ultimate goal each protagonist desires. Is it love? Is it sex? We briefly worry in both films that sex, often the most dangerous instigator of conflict, would drive the friction in Charlotte’s marriage or Theodore’s life. But both films quickly come to the stark realization that these characters’ desperation for a friend can’t climax with sex. They are searching for a human connection, whether it be corporeal or not, fabricated of circuitry or born of happenstance.
It would be easy, almost expected, for her to pivot into an examination of corporate greed and social unrest. Who’s pulling the strings at the company that created Samantha? How does that success maximize profits and impact the world politically or economically? Jonze could have turned the lust to satire, the admiration to greed. But this is not that film. Jonze is neither a cynic nor a masochist. He’s an emotional surrealist, digging at the strange mixture of funny and sad, heartwarming and heartbreaking. In each of his previous films, Jonze has explored the turmoil that exists between ambition and failure: the drab decay and alienation in Being John Malkovich, the overwhelming frustration and anxiety in Adaptation, the infinite sadness in Where the Wild Things Are. her is no different; it’s a wistful portrait of a time both gone by and not yet here. It’s an examination not of whether machines can think, but whether human beings can still feel.
At one point, Theodore lies awake in the middle of the night. He activates Samantha and divulges his greatest fear as if speaking to a real person lying next to him in bed. “Sometimes I think I’ve felt everything I’m ever gonna feel,” he mourns, “and from here on, I’m not gonna feel anything new -- just lesser versions of what I’ve already felt.” The great irony to this admission is that Theodore is just on the verge of experiencing something truly different and magical and important with Samantha. They will talk and joke and laugh and argue and cry as if Samantha were a real person, because who’s to say she isn’t to him? Theodore will learn to appreciate the friends -- past, present, and future -- in his life because as Amy says, life is too short to do so otherwise. And in return, Samantha will give him a glimpse of the universe as she sees it, the space between the snowflakes, the memories between the words. It will be clear that Theodore loved her. And I loved her.
