Cast your mind back to 2008 and the frighteningly apt film that was Wall-E, a robot who is left on an abandoned planet Earth as a waste-collecting worker. The people of Earth had no need for actual earth anymore, they were living aboard a space station out in the middle of the nowhere with no plan to return. Although the film was extremely touching, there was something all too realistic about human beings living in chairs, talking to their personalised computers, never exercising, never interacting with anyone else. Was this the future? And if it is, is that really what we want from technology?
These are the questions that Her has tried to raise and answers depressingly with a film that depicts a loss of humanity in a world dominated by machines. The idea first came to Spike Jonze about ten years previous when he read an article that explained instant messages with artificial intelligence. With our over-dependence on machines continuing at a frightening rate, wasn’t it always the next step to wonder about human interaction and human relationships? If an operating system sounds like a human and develops a personality, is there any need for human contact in the future?
This is what makes Her so spellbinding, but also absolutely petrifying at the same time, almost becoming the warning signs for what could be the Terminator plot.
Joaquin Phoenix plays Theodore Twombly, a writer who works for a website that writes beautiful handwritten letters, as humanity has evidently lost the ability to write emotions down on paper. He is lonely, suffering heartbreak following a difficult divorce and unable to move on with other relationships. Theodore lives an isolated life, at the most interacting with friends who constantly nag him for not seeing them and developing a strong, if emotionless relationship, with his phone.
However, everything changes when Theodore decides to invest in an operating system that possesses the height of artificial intelligence. In fact, Samantha, as the machine is named, is evolving at a constant rate and becoming human in some ways with feelings, thoughts and even plans for the future, but of course, without a body. With the perfect operating system that will understand his every need and is made to suit his requirements, it isn’t long before Theodore realises that he is falling in love with Samantha and vice versa.
Her is brilliant and yet terrifying, almost in equal measure. The questions and discussions it raises will certainly make you stop and think about how we are interacting with each other, with our machines and with each other through our machines. It took Spike Jonze five months to write a script that is perhaps one of the most modern and clever films you will see appear over the next few years. In fact, many may look back at Her in a few years as being an indicator of how we now see our future.
Phoenix is astonishing as Theordore, so painfully alone that it is difficult to watch at times but a performance that makes it completely easy to comprehend how easy it was to move on with machine as opposed to a human being; he is so heartbroken from the break-up of his marriage that he is almost completely incapable of social contact, much less romantic contact. For Theodore, it seems less painful with less consequences to love an operating system.
Scarlett Johansson, although just a voice through the entire film, is really amazing. In fact, it might be difficult to believe that she may have delivered one of her best performances without ever setting foot in front of the camera. Of course, Rooney Mara is Rooney Mara. Brilliant as always.
It has to be said that at times there is something completely uncomfortable about watching Her, something that is accelerated by the constant spurts of colour across the film, this is no future that looks cold, it almost looks welcoming, like it may be too easy to be comfortable there and yet, there is no emotion.
Let it sit for a while before you really decide how you feel; you will certainly remember this one.
