Johansson’s vocal tour de force is award-worthy. Kudos to Scarlett Johansson, who speaks Samantha in tones sweet, sexy, caring, manipulative and scary. The catch is she’s his computer’s operating system and knows him better than anyone she’s programmed that way. No wonder Theodore feels he’s found the perfect woman in Samantha. His best friend (an excellent Amy Adams) is distracted by her work as a video-game maker. Joaquin Phoenix, in a deeply felt performance abounding in grace notes, plays Theodore Twombly, who writes letters online for people who can’t express their feelings. In his fourth feature, following Being John Malkovich, Adaptation and Where the Wild Things Are, director Jonze (in his first original screenplay) imagines a near-future where we live green and our digital commands can become as intimate as a whisper. So I’ll tread lightly with Her, a love story between a man and technology, and a gloriously inventive gift from Spike Jonze. It provokes discussion about the future of human nature and the role technology plays.Some movies need to hold their secrets close. Jonze speculates that our “relationship” with smartphones and social media won’t either.ĭespite being a fictional story, this academy award winning film brings all of these real issues to the forefront. But, we come to realize that his relationship with Samantha does not fulfill his needs. Theodore tries to mend his loneliness and insecurity by confiding in Samantha. Theodore is ultimately afraid of real intimacy and hides behind Samantha to avoid the stress that companionship causes. While writing the screenplay, Jonze’s aim was to create a love story that portrayed the role technology plays in our relationships. Jonze brilliantly captures this new kind of dependence on technology. Some use technology to cope with important life issues –there is growing interest in texting-accessible crisis hotlines. We are becoming encapsulated by all things technological, particularly social media. But it is not this literal interpretation that Jonze is getting at. Since we believe that love can only be shared between living beings, it’s difficult to imagine someone falling in love with a technological entity. Still coping with the end of his marriage, Theodore finds companionship through Samantha and the two develop a romantic relationship. Her colourful vocal intonations create a vision of what Samantha would look like if she were human. She expresses and captures an array of emotions through only her voice, a difficult task for any actor. Johansson’s vocal performance is praiseworthy. The human-like operating system, which promises to be the most intuitive of its kind, is a perky female voice that has the ability to evolve to the user’s demands. Alone and in desperate need for new experiences, a form of artificial intelligence named Samantha (voiced by Scarlett Johansson), piques Theodore’s interest. It becomes apparent that Theodore is in the midst of a divorce, the reason for his somber mood. His Golden Globe nominated performance creates a loveable character with whom viewers empathize…we want to see him succeed in his pursuit to find happiness. Known for playing intense characters, Joaquin Phoenix exquisitely executes this role as the soft-spoken and soulful Theodore. But as he writes, we see his pain the love letters resonate for him. Immediately, the audience sees Theodore’s empathic and sensitive personality through his letters. The nature of Theodore’s work also lends to his character development. Instead, they pay others to express emotions for them. The characters exist in a world where expressing emotion is too difficult for most. The film strategically opens with an introduction to Theodore’s unusual profession, showing how human interaction has changed. Theodore uses his phone’s voice recognition system daily and plays video games using hand gestures, which parallel Apple’s Siri and Microsoft’s Xbox Kinect, making it easy for the viewer to relate. Unlike many science-fiction stories, Her does not venture far from the technology we have today. Set in a slightly futuristic Los Angeles, the film follows Theodore Twombly ( Joaquin Phoenix), who earns a living writing heart-warming personal letters for others.ĭespite being set in the future, this re-imagined world does not seem unfamiliar. But this science fiction romance may be closer to reality than you might think. Written and directed by Spike Jonze, it features a lonely writer who falls in love with his human-like operating system, which is just a voice. The premise of the film Her seems rather unlikely.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |