Dawn.com film review: her
Imagine a world where just your voice commands to your computer could proof read documents, write emails, engage in banter with you and potentially be your girlfriend.
Spike Jonze’s honest and eccentric film ‘her’, projects a dystopian possibility of the world in the future where letter writing protagonist Theodore Twombly (Joaquin Phoenix) falls in love with his operating device, Samantha.
As bizarre at it sounds, ‘her’ manages to be at the very least an emotionally engaging film. It reflects on Theodore’s failed relationship cum reluctant divorce with his childhood lover, Catherine (Rooney Mara), through his progressive new relationship with a non-physical form of a ‘girl’, Samantha.
Samantha voiced by a husky Scarlett Johansson, is better than our common understanding of the operating system SIRI and she is better tailored to the needs of the human kind.
She is witty when she responds, “Oh, good, you think I’m funny”, empathetic in her responses when she detects a change in Theodore’s tone of voice, and is always selfless in the services she offers Theodore.
At times, it’s easy to forget that Samantha is not human. It is precisely this, that she lies in limbo of not having a human body yet containing human like attributes, carrying the film forward with her alluring charm.
Jonze constantly questions the audience about the limitations of being human in comparison to the unlimited boundaries of a computer system like her. He provokes the audience to think about what defines our human experiences and relationships and leaves us thinking about it through till the end of Theodore’s relationships.
Besides the computerised relationship with Samantha, Theodore is in occasional contact with his friend from school, Amy (Amy Adams) and his colleague Paul (Chris Pratt). They provide comic timing and set a clear context about the pervasiveness of technology in their lives.
The sluggish pace of the movie and Theodore’s virtual sexual tension with Samantha might put off the audience slightly. But Jonze makes up for it with some excellent mise-en-scènes of the Los Angeles cityscape and the warm colours that dress the settings and wardrobe of the actors which make the film a pleasant watch.
At the heart of it, ‘her’ speaks to the audience about the core needs of human kind that will eventually outdo the seemingly fascinating ones provided by technology, in time, even if we may not realise it just yet.
Original soundtrack and score:
Courtesy photos, video, and audio.
Taahira Booya is a visiting intern at Dawn.com from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.