Can you fall in love with someone whom you
might not have known fully? Well, Yes, It depends.
Can you fall in love with someone whom you
might not have seen? Oh..!! Yeah, may be.
Can you fall in love with someone who might not
even be real or alive? Huh!! Oh Wait. WHAT?
"Falling in love is a crazy thing to do. It's
like a socially acceptable form of insanity" – This is Director Spike Jonze’s response to the previous
question via his character Amy played by Amy Adams in the film ‘HER’.
Plot spoiler alert: Set in the futuristic Los Angeles, HER is the romantic
tale of Theodore Twombly (Joaquin Phoenix) who works for BeautifulHandWrittenLetters.com
as letter writer #612 (Satire for identify & existential crisis in a
corporate, capitalized environment). He is a loner, antisocial and has an only friend/
neighbor Amy who wants be a documentary film-maker but struck in a game
developer job. Theodore struggles on his divorce with his wife Catherine
(Rooney Mara) and ends up falling in love with his new, highly intuitive, advanced,
Artificial Intelligent Operating System OS1 Samantha (Voiced by Scarlett
Johnson).
Unlike Robin William’s 'Bicentennial Man',
Steven Spielberg’s 'Artificial Intelligence', Minority Report or
any other Sci-fi films, the Human-Computer interaction in HER doesn’t seem
plastic, unreal and unnatural. OS1 Samantha doesn’t act/ voice like a robot/slave
rather she extends herself and keep on learning, growing, evolving more and
more during her perpetual existence which most of our human kind fails to address
or achieve. It can be well observed when she voices down about her experiences,
wishes and expectations to Theodore. ‘I want to know everything about
everything’, she says. Spike Jonze trolls the entire humanity and mankind
with the rhetoric questions, deductions and conclusions, as the voice of
Samantha. Those Cliché Philosophical annotations, existential questions asked
by Samantha to Theodore doesn't seem like the questions that a stupid AI device
ask the humans in the most silly, rhetoric and childish way. Samantha sounds humanly
rich and very much alive like complex homo
sapiens.
Spike Jonze’s touch and stroke to the characters
and the aura that entire movie has in itself is remarkable. Theodore as a
letter writer in a futuristic world seems like a straight ode/ tribute to the
professional letter writers/ messengers who used to sit in common places, transport
service stations and help people with writing letters, passing written messages
etc... Remember the old lady from Walter Salles Central Station movie?
One might come across similar characters in Italian Neo-realism films, historic
and World war films.
Being a Sci-fi, fantasy film the beauty of HER lies in the way it connects with its audience. Just like how the OS1 Samantha seduces Joaquin Phoenix in a particular conversation, Spike Jonze seduces us, draws us close, soaks deep down into the film and makes us to fall in love with HER, irrecoverably. The conversations between Joaquin Phoenix and OS Samantha has been penned really well. Plenty of dialogues strike a deep chord in heart.
It’s truly heartwarming and thought provoking to
hear the characters uttering dialogues like ‘The Past is the story we tell
ourselves’, ‘What it feels like to share your life with someone’, ‘This
beautiful piece of music is our photograph together’, ‘You’re beautiful’, ‘I
wish I could touch you’, ‘ I feel like I can be anything with you’.
The scene where Catherine finds out that Theodore is in a relationship with his
computer OS and says "You're dating your computer? ...You always wanted to
have a wife without the challenges of actually dealing with anything real”, it is definitely
a slap on face for many. The Moon song that Scarlet Johnson sings to the music
of Theodore is such a sweet melody/ lullaby that you would ever hear since your
childhood. The scene where Theodore searches to find Samantha will shake you
upside down, like a father trying to find a lost child or a soul searching for
his lost love.
During the climax, when the screen fades out to
black, brace yourself, you will definitely start weeping and beware, you might hallucinate
the closest electronic device to you (Your laptop or TV or Smartphone) trying to
console you and pass a napkin or Hanky to wipe your tears.
HER wrenches your heart, makes you weep and
you’ll keep on searching within yourself, probing loads of questions with a
daunting feel that Theodore gets when he loses Samantha all of a sudden. Spike
Jonze, just like in his previous films ‘Adaptation’, ‘Where the Wild
things are’ and ‘Being John Malkovich’, has created a dystopian
world within HER where one would long and dare to go, live and love.
Having said that, HER has a heart, soul, an
aura, an ambiance, a silence, a sheer touch of sense and sensibility within
itself that most of the Sci-fi or Romance drama films lacked big time. To my
knowledge, the last time that a Sci-fi, fantasy films had so much of heart and
romance was in ‘Wall-E’, ‘Robert & Frank’ and Michael Gondry's ‘Eternal
sunshine of a spotless mind’. Though the OSCAR panel failed to recognize
Joaquin Phoenix’s acting skills, I am happy that HER is nominated for Best
Picture, Best screenplay, Best original song, Best original score and Best
production design. I wish it fetches and deserves more and more awards and
accolades. HER releases by February 14th Valentine’s Day, in most
parts of the world. Go watch it in theaters and it would be the best Valentine’s
Day that you could gift someone or in a better state to yourself.
After all, if you want to know/ feel the love
and pain of being with someone remotely, emotionally, virtually, verbally conversing with
someone who doesn't exist near/ next to you, the one whom you miss in the best
and worst of your times… Go talk to someone true in a long distance
relationship for years. You’ll almost hear and feel the same story.
P.S. Don’t forget to check this intense discussion post about HER’s gorgeous production design and parody videos, spoof skits of HER.
