Part of the pleasure of the movie is its modest scale, its hushed beauty and the deliberate ordinariness of its story. There are times when “Her” has the quality of a private dispatch, like a secret Mr. Phoenix plays wounded, stunted souls whose agonies are expressed almost reluctantly in halting words and somatic contortions, as in his brutal performance in Paul Thomas Anderson’s “The Master.” His work in “Her” is quieter, more openly vulnerable than in “The Master,” yet, surprisingly, as powerful because, once again, it feels as if his character’s solitude had been drawn from some deep, unarticulated place in Mr. Wearing a tidy mustache and horn-rimmed glasses that temper his good looks with a hint of Groucho Marx comedy, his Theodore - shoulders slumped and pants unflatteringly hitched up - presents a harmless, defeated picture. Phoenix, an actor who excels at exquisite isolation. “Her” is even harder to imagine without Mr. Johansson in “Her,” you can’t help but flash on her lush physicality, too, which helps fill in Samantha and give this ghostlike presence a vibrant, palpable form, something that would have been trickier to pull off with a lesser-known performer. Her voice isn’t an especially melodious instrument, but it’s a surprisingly expressive one (as Woody Allen has figured out) that slides from squeaky girlishness to a smoky womanliness suggestive of late nights and whiskeys. Johansson and whose casting feels inevitable. The role was initially voiced by the British actor Samantha Morton, who, after the movie was shot, was replaced by Ms. Samantha saves him from solitude, drawing him out of himself and then into life itself. The trains are a low-key, witty touch (and true science fiction), but they also let you see early on how lonely Theodore is even in a crowd. The city still sprawls to near-infinity, but it’s now as vertical as Manhattan, and everyone travels by train, not car. Barrett, haven’t reinvented the world, only modestly embellished ours, as with their reimagining of Los Angeles (a role played by that city and Shanghai, with digital assistance). Jonze and his superb production designer, K.
Her spike jonze software#
In “Her,” everything is simultaneously familiar and unfamiliar, like all the voice- and gesture-activated software that Theodore uses at work and at play, as if his era had caught up to today’s prototypes. Jonze’s third feature, “Where the Wild Things Are,” an emotionally delicate live-action adaptation of that Maurice Sendak book, was a visual knockout with a minimalist story and relatively little dialogue. Jonze’s talents to be recognized, it’s partly because of all the attention bestowed on Charlie Kaufman’s scripts for “Adaptation” and “John Malkovich,” which announce their auteurist aspirations on the page. Jonze, a fabulist whose sense of the absurd informs his more broadly comic endeavors (notably his work on the “Jackass” movies, including “Bad Grandpa”) and the straighter if still kinked art-house films he’s directed, like “Being John Malkovich” and “Adaptation.” If it has taken time for the depth of Mr. Before long, he and the software, which calls itself Samantha, are exchanging pleasantries, playing the roles of strangers fated to become lovers. Theodore learns about the operating system from an advertisement and is soon running it on his home computer and phone. The machines haven’t risen, as they have in dystopian tales like “The Terminator” series, but instead have been folded into everyday life.
It’s set, somehow of course, in Los Angeles, that city of plastic fears and dreams, in an unspecified time in the future. The voice organizes his files, gets him out of the house and, unlike some multitasking females, doesn’t complain about juggling her many roles as his assistant, comfort, turn-on, helpmate and savior - which makes her an ideal companion even if she’s also just software.Īt once a brilliant conceptual gag and a deeply sincere romance, “Her” is the unlikely yet completely plausible love story about a man, who sometimes resembles a machine, and an operating system, who very much suggests a living woman. The voice brightly greets him in the morning and, with a sexy huskiness, bids him good night in the evening. For Theodore Twombly (Joaquin Phoenix), the poetically melancholic hero in “Her,” Spike Jonze’s exquisite new movie, that voice (Scarlett Johansson) is a lifeline to the world, which he has loosened his hold on since separating from his wife. She sounds like the girl next door - young, friendly, eager.
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