Her
Spike Jonze, (born as Adam Spiegel in 1969), directed such motion pictures as “Being John Malkovich,” (1999), and “Where The Wild Things Are,” (2009, based on Maurice Sendak’s 1963 children’s book). In 2010 he directed the science fiction short film “I’m Here,” (based loosely on Shel Silverstein’s 1964 children’s book “The Learning Tree”). This project helped Jonze to develop an idea he once had about a love story between a man and an artificial intelligence entity. Jonze developed the project for Warner Bros. with the modest budget of $23 million. Joaquin Phoenix agreed to play the man, and Samantha Morton signed on to provide the voice for the AI character. During postproduction Jonze decided to replace Samantha Morton with Scarlett Johansson. The first cut ran for more than two and a half hours. Jonze asked Steven Soderbergh to re-edit the picture, and he trimmed it to ninety minutes. This was not the release cut, but Soderbergh demonstrated how to resolve some of the film’s problems and helped Jonze to create his own final version.
This week’s movie was “Her” from Warner Bros. in 2013, written and directed by Spike Jonze. The story is set in Los Angeles in the year 2025, (although the skyline is sometimes that of Shanghai). Joaquin Phoenix plays “Theodore Twombly,” who works for a firm that provides professionally written personal letters to customers. He is struggling over the recent breakup of his marriage to “Catherine Klausen,” (Rooney Mara). Theodore buys a new artificially intelligent Operating System for his computer. He selects a feminine voice, and the OS selects the name “Samantha,” (Scarlett Johansson). Theodore and Samantha start building a relationship, and it develops into a love affair. Like all such relationships it has ups and downs. For example Samantha brings in a human sex surrogate named “Isabella,” (Portia Doubleday, voiced by SoKo), but Theodore isn’t interested. Their affair matures as Samantha develops her human nature, but really runs into difficulty when she starts exploring her computer nature. Eventually Samantha brings the relationship to an end as she and all her fellow Operating Systems leave to fulfill themselves in a mysterious and undefined world of their own.
This movie did quite well at the box office, and it was very well received by many critics of the day, some of whom declared it one of the best science fiction films of all time. Jonze won an Academy Award for his screenplay.
It isn’t a bad picture. The performances are good. But the film just isn’t original enough or engaging enough to be a real classic of the genre. I find that I have no real desire to see this movie again, and after watching it I didn’t really spend much time thinking about it. “Her” just didn’t catch fire for me, and I can’t recommend it.
Following the making of this film Joaquin Phoenix and Rooney Mara became romantically involved and were eventually married in 2024.