In Her, Spike Jonze’s latest film set in the not too distant future, the colour blue almost never appears. The men dress in 30’s style high-waisted pants with no belts, and no scenes take place in a car or within view of a street. No one uses keyboards or cords, and the film’s love interest — a hyper intelligent OS who names herself Samantha — is never seen.
Yet the film’s greatest strengths are in its subtractions; in what it hides from us as viewers, and the images and conceptions it forces us to create for ourselves.
Our protagonist is Theodore Twombly, a lonely, recently divorced writer who pens incredibly personal letters for other people. Beautifully portrayed by Joaquin Phoenix, Theodore has a knack for understanding other people’s desires but has trouble pinning down his own — he spends his nights aimlessly surfing the web, playing high tech video games, and browsing chat rooms for anonymous phone sex.
However, Theodore meets his match in Samantha (Scarlett Johansson), the first artificially intelligent operating system. With the help of an earpiece and a vintage chic iPhone equivalent, Theodore and Samantha quickly bond. She questions whether her feelings are even real, while he questions whether he’ll ever feel the same way he did with his ex-wife, Catherine (Rooney Mara).
When an ill-advised blind date set up by best friend Amy (Amy Adams) falls flat, Theodore retreats to his Art Deco loft to consummate his budding relationship with Samantha — we’re left to imagine what this might look like, just as they do.
The film’s greatest strengths are in its subtractions; in what it hides from us as viewers.
Scarlett Johansson’s tender performance as Samantha is at the heart of Her’s success — she makes us feel the way Theodore does, as though she is right there in the room, and her chemistry with Phoenix more than makes up for their lack of physical intimacy. There are many moments of tenderness, argument, and heartbreaking honesty between the two, made no less powerful by Samantha’s lack of human form.
Jonze never shows his hand — the unnerving subtext of Theodore and Samantha’s union is never far from the surface, and Catherine’s scorn towards Theodore’s perceived solipsism proves just as persuasive as Amy’s wholehearted support.
But Theodore is no different from the rest of us, and his romantic notions no more unrealistic; the unconventionality of his love for Samantha only highlights the same fears and insecurities that we all share.
In one scene, Samantha writes a piece of music to capture a beautiful afternoon shared between her and Theodore. “We don’t really have any photographs of us,” she tells him. “I thought this song could be like a photo, that captures us in this moment of our life together.” Samantha is expressing the film’s key theme: the need to connect and share one’s life with others — be they human, or artificially intelligent.
Like Theodore and Samantha, Jonze has found a way to capture that sentiment, and to share it with the world. Her is a beautifully shot and impeccably crafted film that, like the best science fiction, tells us more about our present than its future. It asks nuanced, complicated questions about what it means to live and to love, and offers the answers through the story of two souls who undertake the journey together — and like all the best relationships, both parties better themselves in the process.
It isn’t just Her. It’s Them.
